OUTDOORS: The catch of the day

I continued to cast without luck. I also glanced back at the other anglers to see if they were catching anything. I was faced in their direction when there was a huge splash to my right. I quickly turned just in time to see the osprey come out of the water with a 12-inch fish in its talons and fly off toward Buzzards Bay.

Last Tuesday I went to the Cape Cod Canal to try fishing for striped bass. We are down to only one meal of striper and I was hoping to catch a keeper to add some fresh filets to the freezer. I left the house in pre-dawn darkness under the light of a bright moon and drove to Buzzards Bay, crossing the Bourne Bridge to fish the west end of the Canal on the Cape side.

 After parking the truck, I changed my shoes to a pair of metal-studded wading boots, which gives me more traction while walking on the wet rocks and seaweed on the edge of the water. A well-worn path led through a strip of woods and out to the service road, which runs along the edge of the Canal.

 The eastern sky was beginning to lighten and the moon was setting to the west. When I got to the water I was hoping to see fish breaking on the surface or somebody fighting one in, but there was neither. I did see five fishermen, though, in the area where I was hoping to fish. They were casually casting a variety of lures and, as I walked by, two of them they said there hadn’t been any action to speak of for the past few days.

 I walked the service road to an open spot and carefully walked down the rock embankment to the edge of the water. The tide was low and the water was slack as I scanned the Canal for any sign of fish, then made my first cast with a paddle-tail jig.

 The reel I was using is an open-faced conventional and when casting it the spool needs to be slowed down by hand to avoid a backlash. “An educated thumb,” the old timers would say, and it does take some dexterity to get used to the technique. If you don’t apply enough pressure to the rapidly spinning spool of line you get a bird’s nest, as some call it. If you apply too much pressure, you either stop the lure dead in midair or the friction burns your thumb.

 I haven’t used the reel since last September when I made a few trips to the Canal, and I wasn’t too surprised when I felt a sudden burning pain in my thumb halfway through the first cast. The pain was equal to touching a hot skillet and I instantly released the pressure on the line causing it to backlash. The lure dropped into the water about 50 yards out and, to avoid losing it on the bottom, I reeled in the line over the mess on the spool instead of untangling it. After getting the lure back to shore, I stripped all the good line down to the bird’s nest and worked for about 10 minutes to straighten it out.

 While I was working on the reel, the sky was getting brighter as the sun began to rise. An osprey flew over the water then landed 40 yards away from me in a cedar tree along the edge of the service road. Ospreys are a large, black-and-white bird of prey that relies mostly on a diet of fish. I wished I had a camera to photograph the majestic bird against the colorful morning sky.

When the reel was back in order, I made a few short casts and everything worked well, including my friction-burned thumb, which I dipped in the water a few times to cool it off. A few minutes later I noticed a great blue heron flying across the Canal in my direction and was surprised when it landed on the edge of the water 20 yards beyond the osprey, which was still sitting on the top of the cedar.

 Ospreys and herons are not a rare sight at the Canal, but it was enjoyable to see them so close while I was casting. The next bird I saw isn’t rare either, but it gave me a start. I was watching the blue heron and suddenly heard a splash in front of me. I turned my head just in time to see a big swirl in the water and thought it was a striped bass, but instead a cormorant popped to the surface after making a dive to the bottom.

 Now I had three large birds in close proximity doing the same thing I was doing – fishing. While I used a rod, reel, lure and sharpened hooks, the blue heron stood perfectly still staring into the water ready to impale a meal with its long spear-like beak. On the other hand, cormorants swim to the bottom to chase their prey and ospreys dive from the sky or the tops of trees to snag fish with their sharp talons.

 While thinking about all of that, I continued to cast without luck. I also glanced back at the other anglers to see if they were catching anything. I was faced in their direction when there was a huge splash to my right. I quickly turned just in time to see the osprey come out of the water with a 12-inch fish in its talons and fly off toward Buzzards Bay.

 After a while the blue heron flew back across the Canal and the cormorant swam to the east with the incoming tide. I fished for another hour without catching a striped bass, but returned home impressed with the catch the osprey made.