The southern end of the Manorville road looks like a place where a bridge washed out. Brightly colored barricades guide the continuous line of cars sharply left onto Montauk Highway. A few years ago, someone spray-painted Monster Bass on the barricade. Under the words, the graffiti perp drew an arrow pointing in the direction of traffic. It’s gone now, but I still look for it, and miss it. It spoke the dream — Monster Bass — in large, honest letters. And to make sure that the words were not just idling in the void, there was the arrow, underscoring the message and guiding us east.
The arrow said, "This way. It’s real. I promise."
There are a hundred triggers in the surfcasting psyche and Monster Bass fires all of them at once. I’ll protest that big fish are not all I think about, but I can’t recollect obsessing about a small one that got away. When I lecture myself that 2-pound bass moments and 25-pound bass moments are equally precious, I smell mendacity. Some fish are more equal than others.
I was hoping for monster bass years ago when I decided to explore the stretch of beach between Ditch Plains and the Montauk Light. I pictured myself discovering secret places where big fish lived and passed on their wisdom to smaller fry. I fell right into line behind countless other explorers who followed the dreamy, evanescent trail of their bliss.
The first step on the trail is the notion that the coastline is a frontier, a place where anglers can explore the unknown.
The second step says that the harder a place is to get to, the more promise it holds.
The third step required me to ignore Fertig’s first rule of Fishdynamics which states that if you drive 20 miles to get to a fishing spot, a blitz will take place in front of your house.
I ignored, and followed my bliss. I set out confident that, if I lurched over enough rocky coastline, I would leave the beachbuggies and less determined anglers far behind, and find a place where fish grew to huge proportions, waiting for someone to arrive.
This was nonsense, but it was core nonsense, operative bull, and it got me walking.
I walked east from Ditch Plains. A trailer park was the last outpost of civilization. I left it quickly behind me. The cove beyond was shallow, dotted with rocks, and looked promising.
I cast as I walked, throwing a popper. A popper won’t get hung up in the shallows, and it’s a good fish finder. Even if fish are indifferent, they often resent a popper enough to swat at it, or jump over it. It was a good choice of lure for an explorer-angler on the move.
A group of large rocks 100 feet offshore verged on deeper water, but, when I tried to wade to them, the waves hit me in the chest and floated the lures out of my bag. I waded back to shore and pressed on.
Just beyond the eastern edge of the cove, I looked for Birdcrap Rock — purportedly good fishing. Yes. I had asked, "Why do you call it . . ."
Anyway, there it was, looming out of the water — a large rock, its peak capped with alimentary snow. I made a few casts, then walked on. Birdcrap Rock was my final landmark. After that I trudged east alone into unknown territory.
A short time later, the bluff came up close on my left, constricted the way, and crowded me toward the water. My attention stayed on the ground, intent on managing my feet over the football-sized stones. The narrowed path led to a turn where the bluff jutted out in a wedge that almost met the water. When I rounded the edge of the bluff I looked up. Time stopped. A beautiful cove, a long semicircular vision of smooth water held by a sandy beach, unfolded from the narrow place. The approach had hidden it until the last dramatic moment. I stood and looked for a very long time, savoring the magic of discovery. Satisfied, I walked back to Ditch Plains.
I returned with friends, proud of my find. On some level I realized that I had found a place that other people already knew about, but I glowed with a sense of accomplishment that nothing could diminish. I called my beautiful cove The Bowl. It didn’t bother me to learn that I had walked to Frisbees Point and rediscovered Frisbees.
The Bowl gave up most of its treasures on the western edge. A shallow shelf of sand and rock formed the rim of the bowl on that side. It was possible to wade out, climb on a rock, cast, and bring the lure in through the breakers along the edge of the shelf. Two large rocks created a natural gateway that compressed the water flowing between them. With a little care, the cast could be maneuvered through the gateway. This was the place where bass lay in ambush.
Flush with success from my first expedition, I resolved to locate one of fishing’s golden cities. I set out from The Lighthouse one afternoon walking west in search of the fabled Caswells. After an hour and a half of trekking over boulders, past promising points and offshore fishing rocks, I rounded a bend in the beach and met a young couple with two children. The whole family sat peacefully on a large rock, watching the water. Natives. I asked where I was in the language of the area. "Caswells", the young woman replied. Since I had walked a long way and they had young children, I asked, "How did you get here?" They gestured behind them to a path up the side of the bluff. So I took the path to the trail to the road to the long way back to The Light. Sometimes explorers get lucky.
Sometimes not. I was fishing Caswells one clear day, taking a break on the beach from some very good autumn bass action, when a young explorer walked up with his surf rod. We talked a little. "Anything going on?" he asked. "No," I replied, "it’s really slow." He said, "I heard Caswells is hot. Do you know where that is?" I looked him in the eye and told him it was about a mile farther east and he headed that way.
The way I see the two events, the family telling me and me not telling him, the difference is that the family didn’t have their fishing rods with them. If they had been fishing I never would have learned a thing.
Names are power, both people’s names and names of places. Frank Tuma’s name is synonymous with Montauk fishing. He came to Montauk in 1918 and learned the beach by patrolling it as a coastguardsman. Always a fisherman, he would become a pioneer surfcaster, a bluewater charter captain, and the owner of a Montauk marina and a couple of tackle shops. Half a century ago, Frank and a friend annotated a map of the area, naming the fishing spots for surfcasters. Here is how he tells the story:
"Dick Gilmartin and I dreamed it up one evening at the old Montauk Tavern. We converted a former Chamber of Commerce map to a fishing guide by inserting names of beaches and our favorite fishing spots. For the price of two drinks, Harold Dunlap was made immortal by chancing into the tavern just as we were stuck for the name of one of the coves."
And there it is, Dunlaps, right on the map between Deadmans and Casino, a little west of Ditch Plains.
Whether you are searching for monster bass or angling for the Explorer’s Club, you gain by walking the beach. Every point of land compresses and accelerates water flow. Every offshore rock is the scene of underwater ambush. And a line of breaking waves signals a shallow ridge or sand bar, turning the little fish that tumble over it into meals for the predators that wait in the trough.
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