It took three years, but it finally happened. I took a swim off the kayak. I’ve taken the boat out to play with, with no gear, and tested its limits and gone in. That was intentional though. Outside of that, I’ve never lost it. My boat can handle some serious water and I’ve been caught out in three foot seas without issue. It’s not fun but I’ve survived easily. Cue Sunday morning. The Old Man and I launched at about 4:30am at a location about 500 yards upstream from a tidal river on Cape Cod. We timed it to catch the end of the outgoing tide and it pulled us into a glass-calm bay. It was truly an eerie, surreal environment. There was absolutely no wind, a light fog and overcast skies. It call combined to create disorienting, purgatory-like atmosphere.
As we left the river and paddled through the rip created at the end, we saw the familiar faces of a few fellow fly fisherman. They were pulling the usual schoolies with a few shad mixed in. Par for the course at this particular river. We had our sites set on some bigger fish though. Earlier that morning we stopped at Maco’s and picked up a dozen sea worms. They’re vile creatures, but they play a crucial role in the popular “tube & worm” trolling method. We hadn’t rigged them up yet, but still we left the mouth to troll the shore a bit, taking advantage of the kayaks. I was trolling a white deceiver off my fly rod and a white bucktail with a white Otter Tail trailer. I doubled up on the white mainly out of laziness. I’ve been doing well with the deceiver and it was already rigged on my fly rod so I left it. The bucktail was also already rigged to my spin rod but when I tried changing it, I realized I left my plug box in my car. So until I rigged up my tube, a bucktail would have to do.
The conditions were deceiving. I thought we were in for some decent action but it really proved to be very slow. The Old Man picked up one dink as we trolled down the beach but I came up empty handed. We made our way back up to the channel opening and saw the other group had keyed into a good school of small bass. A couple guys were catching on almost every cast. We fished the rip with them for a few minutes, both of us picking up a couple fish. In general the fish were in tight though, and it was difficult to reach them with the kayaks without crowding out the folks on shore. We took it as a sign to get on with our mission.
We paddled away from the rip and left our fellow fly fishermen, careful to keep our plan under wraps. We felt like traitors. We rigged up our tubes and fought some worms onto the hooks. Not too far off shore lies a ledge. You can get a rough idea of where it is by looking for the field of lobster pots. It is a famous spot and trolling the tube and worm is a notorious striper killer there. Apparently the fish didn’t get the memo that we’d be there though. We trolled the area, carefully weaving our way through the pots, for over an hour with not so much as a hit. As the sun began to break through the cloud cover a slight breeze finally picked up. It was blowing from north west, and we continued to make our way west since it would blow us back to the river when we decided we’d had enough.
The weather decided that for us pretty quickly. Not twenty minutes after the first movement air came across the bay, a solid 15-20 knot wind had picked up and the water boiled up in anger. The calm bay suddenly had two and three foot swells as the temperature dropped and clouds came back over the sky, blanketing the sun. We weren’t worried, but fishing was difficult and we made our way back to the river. We both had pulled our tube rigs and the Old Man was done fishing all together. I was holding out hope, thinking maybe the sudden rough water would stir up some action. I put on a small epoxy sand eel and trolled my fly rod as I paddled. It seems the water did stir up some bait because suddenly birds started diving closer to shore. I trolled through a couple of times with no luck. By my third pass I had given up on the day. There didn’t seem to be any fish under the bait and the conditions were only worsening. Suddenly my rod bent in half and my drag was screaming. God Damn! This was the fish I had been waiting for. I thought I was in for a keeper, on a fly that I had never caught a fish on before too. He muscled up a good fight, took a few good runs and fooled me. I had gotten a look at him and saw that he was far from a keeper, but still not a bad fish. I got him to the boat and he looked to be 20-22″. Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of him due to the conditions. I released him and threw my fly out again because I’m a glutton for punishment. I ended up picking up a shad shortly after.
By now we were back at the mouth of the river. The tide had turned, and the wind was actually pushing the tide back in rather quickly. The waves were now breaking over the shelf at the mouth of the river and this is where it all went wrong. The problem with the kayaks, and I assume the same can be said for all boats if scaled correctly, is that you lose all control when you paddle with the surf. You try to time your entry, aiming for the small breaks between the sets and then paddle your heart out. I watched as the Old Man tried taking the river entrance head on. It didn’t take long for a good breaker to come in, push him sideways and knock him off. I watched, still sitting outside of the breaking surf and watched him stand. Luckily he was in knee deep water. One down.
I decided to come in on the west side where it seemed a bit easier. I set off, tried paddling as fast as I could and thought I was actually going to make it. But I was wrong. A good size wave broke right over the back of me, swamping my entire boat. There wasn’t enough time for the water to drain out the scuppers before the next wave came in. I was a sitting duck. With the boat swamped I couldn’t move and the wave just kicked out my rear end. My buoyancy was trashed with all the water in the boat so instead of riding up and over the wave I went through it. It kicked me off. It’s disorienting at first, but I quickly got to my feet and tried holding onto the boat. That’s when I realized one of my biggest mistakes of the day. I hadn’t leashed my paddle to the boat, nor had I really prepared anything else. So as I stood up I had to decide what I was grabbing. Immediately in front of my was my kayak, paddle and my new coffee mug. I fumbled for them as I got pounded by the surf. The kayak was ripped from my hand, and with my two rods in their holders, sticking up in the air, it flipped. I managed to get to the boat quickly before it it was pounded too hard but I had visions of broken rod tips when I flipped it. I don’t know how but both rods came out unscathed.
All in all I ended up losing my anchor and a box of sinkers. I know enough people that frequent the area that it’s not out of the questions I get one or both back but I’m not holding out much hope.
That photo is really the only one I took that day. It doesn’t look like much but that is after I got the boat up on shore and rescued what I thought was everything that dumped out. We are on a sandbar jutting out with the river on the left and the breakers behind me. I think I learned some humility that morning. Like said early on, I’ve never come close to going over before so I went into this situation a bit too headstrong. It was a wild end to the morning. I can’t lie, there’s a sick part of me that enjoyed it. Sure it sucked losing my anchor that I just bought this year, but it was only a matter of time before I lost it anyway. As I type this now, all I can think of is getting back out there. I’m still after that big fish and I’m certainly not going to catch it sitting here in front of my computer. On a final note, I just bought a switch rod. I’m in the process of choosing a line and getting the rest of the outfit together but stay tuned for a write up on it.
Tight Lines!
Hook & Spoke 