The Maestro – by Phillip Caputo

David Wilson could be described as a bulky leprechaun.  At five-eleven and about 190 pounds, his frame is that of an ex-running back who could use a few laps around the field.  His square face topped by curly, ginger-brown hair and set off by pale, merry eyes, makes you think of an Irish bartender telling an off-color joke.

To say that he loves to fish would be like saying that Julia Child loves to cook.  No niggling purist, he can, and will fish for anything that swims with anything that casts a line and hook, but his greatest joy is orchestrating angling weekends for his friends.  He’s caught enough fish in his life, from half-pound brook trout to giant Bluefin tuna, that catching them doesn’t thrill him half as much as watching other people catch them.

Last August, he phoned my wife and me in Connecticut from his office in Miami where he works as a financial planner.  He said he was going to flee the stifling South Florida summer for Montauk, where his family maintains a cottage and where he intended to spend a weekend in early September fishing for blues and stripers.  A confirmed bachelor at thirty-nine, Wilson did not want to spend all that time alone.  Would we care to join him?  Of course.  As soon as we agreed, he informed us that he had invited two other couples, and that one of the couples would be his ex-girlfriend and the man she’d married after she’d realized that Wilson reacts to altars the way Count Dracula does to mirrors.

That made me uneasy.  Would there be tension between the former boyfriend and the new husband?  How were seven people going to sleep in that cottage without getting immodest glimpses of each other?  Did I secretly hope we’d get immodest glimpses of each other?  What made me uneasier still was the news that only one of the four other people was an experienced angler.  I had visions of frustrating casting tutorials, fouled lines, lost lures, and other woes.  Also, I don’t consider fishing a mass sport.  I like to fish alone or with at most one or two other anglers.  I had, moreover, taken part in half a dozen of Wilson’s outings, ranging from trout-fishing expeditions in the Catskills to big-game forays off the Jersey Shore, and never once caught anything worth lying about.  Why should this trip be any different?  Wilson, who possesses an optimism resistant to most forms of reality, assured me that we’d be reeling in huge bluefish and striped bass, upon which we would feast in the evenings.  As an angling pessimists, always convinced that a mean God will deny me the joy of catching a fish, the sunny forecast irritated me.

By the time Leslie and I left, early on a Saturday morning, I’d managed to work myself into a dark, anti-social mood.  Even the relatively light traffic on the Long Island Expressway failed to cheer me up.  I wanted very much to catch a big striper on fly – a quest I’d been on for five years – but that was going to be difficult with all those damned people along, to say nothing of the mean God who didn’t want me to catch a big striper on fly because He didn’t like me.

“This is going to be a waste of time, like all of Wilson’s trips.” I said to Leslie as we approached Montauk.  “I can just see him.  His eyes’ll twinkle and he’ll grin that grin of his and rub his hands and tell us that the blues are blitzing and the stripers are running and then we’ll cast till our arms fall off and nothing’ll happen.”

“And everyone he’s invited are in their mid-thirties.  Thirtysomethings.  This is going to be the Big Chill with fishing rods and I’m fifty-three and I’m going to feel like a chaperon at a senior prom.”

Her mouth told me to stop complaining.

Later, as we unloaded our gear, I was positively delighted to discover that I’d left my tackle bag and four fishing reels in the garage at home.  I’d remembered to bring two fly rods and two surf casting rods, but there were no reels or flies or lures or leaders.  Good.  Now I had a reason to feel like hell.  The only thing that annoyed me, besides Wilson’s grin and his promise that the blues were blitzing and the stripers running, was that one of his guests – the one who was an angler – also had forgotten his gear.  This was an instance where misery did not love company.  I wanted to feel like hell all by myself and mope and sulk and silently curse the mean God who’d made me leave the stuff behind.

Wilson had enough surf casting gear for five people, however, we would share.

By the late afternoon, the nine of us were marching down the beach at Hither Hills state park, pitching lures into an ocean that seemed as fishless as an interstate highway.  No birds diving on schools of panicked bunker, no violent splashes of blitzing blues, no great boils of the giant stripers that I would not catch on fly because God didn’t want me to.  The worse the fishing got, the cheerier I became.  Gallantly, I offered my surf casting rig to Liz, Wilson’s ex-girlfriend; gallantly, I gave my wife casting lessons, knowing that the two women wouldn’t catch a thing.  Hey-heh, things were turning out as rotten as I’d expected.

In the evening, Wilson decided that we’d have better luck fishing off a certain point.  Now this spot is accessible only by four-wheel-drive vehicle or on foot.  I had a four-wheel-drive, but no permit to drive it on the beach.  Great!  Now, in waders, we would have to walk the two-plus miles to the point.  A five-mile round trip through soft sand.  And if we caught nothing, as I knew we would, then all that effort would be a waste, except for the cardio-vascular benefits.  Sure enough, I was right.

By the time we returned to the cottage, in pitch darkness, everyone except Wilson and I was disconsolate.  Wilson because of his invincible optimism, I because my prophesies of doom had proved so accurate.

“What did I tell you,” I said to Leslie, with a kind of savage glee.

“Oh shut up,” she said.

In a moment I discovered the reason for the collective doom.  In his optimism, Wilson had reduced us, urbanite of the late twentieth century, to Neolithic hunter-gatherers.  That is, we were supposed to have caught our supper.  Having fished all day and walked a total of seven miles, we were ravenous, but there was nothing to eat in the house, and owing to the late hour all the restaurants in town were closed.  Ditto the supermarkets.

“Wait a minute, Dave” I said. “Do you mean there is literally nothing in this house?”

“Well, there’s some broccoli and potatoes.”

“Broccoli and potatoes.”

The maestro’s face lit up.

“But listen, I’ll go down to the docks.  There’s bound to be a charter boat in with some blues, maybe even a tuna.”

“There won’t be.” I predicted and went inside to make a martini big enough to accommodate the giant striper I would never catch.

Wilson returned from the docks with the good news.  No Fish.  Fortunately Liz’s single name was Murphy and Wilson is a “Walsh” on his mother’s side.  The two of them pooled their Irish genes and produced a tub of garlic mashed potatoes so tasty we hardly noticed the hole in the platter where the fish should have been.

The next day brought a fishless morning and a fishless afternoon, but neither made a scratch in Wilson’s positive mental attitude.  Around four o’clock, when it appeared as though we were going to go home skunked, he gathered us together on some beach somewhere and announced that the tide would soon be coming in at Montauk Point.  This incoming, he enthused would bring in numberless bunker and other baitfish, and with them, the blues and stripers.  It is a testimony to his powers that we all agreed to give it one more try, but we extracted from him a solemn promise to quit before the restaurants closed.

“You know nothing is going to happen, don’t you” I said to Leslie as we drove uphill toward Montauk Point, but before she could tell me to shut up a glorious sight made me eat my words, and the taste of them was far better than garlic mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli.  Looking down toward the spire of Montauk lighthouse, I saw several dozen charter boats anchored about a half mile offshore, surrounded by the frothing waters of a huge bluefish blitz.  Gulls and terns filled the sky like swirling smoke.  When the tide turned, surely those blues would steam toward shore and chase the bunker right up onto the rocks.

We parked, quickly got into our waders and marched down to the beach, which the trailers and campers of an army of anglers had turned into a sandy bivouac.  Campfires burned for almost a mile in either direction.  Not the sort of scene to thrill a guy who likes solitude, but if I could catch one, just on, bluefish, I wouldn’t mind the company.

Along with everyone else, we waited for the tide.  Now and then, one of us waded out a few yards, made a few casts, and then waded back. Finally, a cloud of sea birds appeared some 400 yards away, swooping and diving into a wide swath of frothing water.  Blues were skyrocketing out of the placid green seas.  If the school moved in another 200 or 300 yards, it would be within casting range.  Another flock of birds appeared, and more boils, closer in.  Closer still…  Surf casters were tumbling out of their campers and trailers, and wading out as far as safety would allow.  The blitz was on.  There are few sights in sport fishing more exciting and it caused 30 years of feminist agitation to be swept aside in an instant: the five men grabbed the five available rods and left the four women ashore.

With the water nearly up to my chest, I clipped a Krocodile spoon to my braided wire leader, figuring the heavy lure would carry into the nearest school of fish.  I brought the rod back and snapped it forward and watched the spoon arc up and out over 100 yards into the middle of a thousand slashing tails and toothy jaws.  On my third try, I felt the strike that is like no other – a bluefish strike, savage and swift and almost shocking in its power.  The rod bent, the line whistled through the guides, a joyous sound.  As I fought the fish, ducking under the taut lines of anglers beside me, I passed Wilson, fighting a fish of his own, and his twinkling eyes and broad grin were fully justified.  All along the shore, almost as far as I could see, were U-shaped rods forming a kind of archway.  Seaward were boils and leaping fish and diving birds, while the Montauk bluffs looked as red as Arabian dunes in the sunset.  It was a sight to make even a grumphead grin a Wilson grin.

I beached the fish – it went about eight pounds – waded out, hooked another, lost it, then noticed, about a quarter of a mile down the beach, another school churning the waters within 50 yards off shore.  I grabbed my fish and ran, found Leslie and Liz standing over Wilson’s catch – a ten pounder – and dropped mine at their feet.

“Keep an eye on them!” I shouted to the two women.  “I’m going to get another one!”

Wilson had hooked up again.  Wading out as far as I dared, I made a cast and was on right away.  Five or ten minutes later, I beached a blue of close to 12 pounds.  Playing the role of proud male provider, I dragged it over to Liz and Leslie to guard with their lives.

After I’d found another spot for myself amid the long line of surf casters, I received a chastisement for my boorish conduct toward the women.  A grimacing angler passed in front of me, ducked under my line, and pumped in a striped bass that looked as big as an eye-beam.  I resisted the temptation to scream, “That’s my fish,” for I remembered that the mean God didn’t want me to catch one, not on any sort of tackle.

As twilight fell, the lighthouse resembling a minaret rising above those Arabian-red dunes and bluffs, we called it quits.  We had more than 50-odd pounds of bluefish, more than enough to make up for the previous night’s Irish Potato Famine dinner.  The maestro strung our fish, then hooked a gaff through the rope, and he and I raised our prizes as Liz asked us to pose for a photograph.

“The last hour of the last day,” I said.  “Wilson, it couldn’t have been more dramatic than if you’d planned it to happen that way.”

“Who says I didn’t,” he replied, grinning into the camera.

From Saltwater Sportsman Backcasts, April 1995