Great Point lighthouse is a popular tourist attraction on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts.
Running out of the inlet, he said, “I feel good about where I am, Dad. I feel good about what I’m about to do.” We were headed towards Cape Lookout and I knew he was talking about fishing and I know he was talking about things other than fishing, and he worked the boat through the rough water where the outgoing tide was piling up in tall rollers and calm water lay ahead.
That albacore season with Jack, everything seemed to be on hold, and teetering, and it was a long Indian summer of warm days and he was out of school during the pandemic, starting his senior college year with online classes, and finally had time for something he’d never had time for before: Getting serious about saltwater fish on the fly.
For three years he’d guided for trout in Montana during the summers, rolling back east barely in time for the first day of classes. But that summer was different, in every imaginable sense, for everyone and certainly for a rising college senior. And one of the silver linings was this: He’d spent the summer on our boat, and on his friends’ boats, chasing Spanish mackerel and bluefish and redfish, live-baiting for kings, practice-casting on the beach, and tying flies.
We’d been hard after the false albacore for two weeks, with intermittent success. During our best chance we’d each landed a fish from a popcorn-blitzing school and he was fighting his second, and in a moment of selfish disregard I cast from the console and sent a lead-wrapped size 2 heavy-gauge hook through one side of his ear cartilage and out the other. I cut the line and he landed his fish with the heavy fly flapping against his ear lobe, and then we motored away from the other anglers so I could work the fly out as he fought nausea and fainting. I was a little on edge, waiting for him to blow up—I would have, and who wouldn’t?—but he was perfectly calm. “This is fishing, Dad,” he said. “This stuff happens. Give me a minute, okay? Let me catch my breath and see if I can stand up and we’ll get back after them.”
Then, clearing the inlet, we raced towards the Hook, set on beating the other boats to the fish, the rising sun a golden scimitar on the horizon. It was three days before Halloween and he was unshaven and grizzled, with Chaco tan lines striping the tops of his feet. He even smelled like an angler, shorts and shirt slimed with fish scales and blood and sweat, and why wear a clean set when more of the same is coming?
I’m a brooder with a slight tendency to pout when I don’t like the way the stars line up, and I’d found more reasons than I should to lament certain moments of the last few months. Jack’s last year in college. His last autumn close to home. Most likely our last chance at false albacore in what could be a longer stretch than I wanted to contemplate. I’d started to count the grains of sand slipping through the glass, and hoard each one as if it was the best there would ever be. It was an unhealthy approach, for both my head and my marriage, but running out of the inlet with Jack I suddenly realized just how different my headspace was than my son’s.
In the inlet, I sensed constriction and constraint and the turbulent waters of the far-off shoals. But for Jack, the future was as boundless as the great curve of blue that heralded the ocean ahead, as full of possibility as every new day on the water.
And just then I remembered a moment from the day before. I’d arrived in the late afternoon, and Jack had the fire crackling in the fire pit, and an extra Manhattan waiting on the picnic table beside the fly rods, and he grinned as I walked through the gate. He handed me the drink as I sat by the fire and his girlfriend smiled. “You know Jack,” she said. “He wanted everything perfect for you.” It was one of those times that under different circumstances might not have snagged in my heart. Just a chummy gesture among pals. Instead, it will go down as one of my most favorite fishing memories, although there was no fishing in it, no zinging lines or thighs pressed against the gunwale, only my son who’d gone to the trouble of carefully placing each element of that backyard tableau together to let me know: So glad you’re here, Dad. So glad we can fish together.
With the inlet behind and the smoky scrim of Cape Lookout seven miles distant, Jack bore down on the throttle, oblivious to my agitated state of mind. And that’s when I realized that I needed to recalibrate my own perspectives on the days and years ahead. Open water lay before us both. We each were on a course towards horizons unseen. I’ve chased the new and the unknown all my life, and all my life those pursuits have been a source of vigor and elation. That could only change if I let it.
The bow settled and I felt the bezel turning on my own inner compass. Running towards the cape, I scanned the water for diving birds and breaking schools. We had a full day of fishing ahead, my son and I, and neither of us would rather be anywhere else in the world. Whatever grain of sand was to follow was less consequential than the moment at hand.
…In our last issue of 2021, you’ll find themes consistent with this message of looking optimistically toward the future while respectfully recognizing the past. We welcome the venerable writer T. Edward Nickens as a new contributor. His thoughtful piece in The Undertow explores his own epiphany about hopeful perspectives on unknown horizons. Meanwhile, we also look back with respect on those who’ve preceded us; James Spica guides us, fly rod in hand, along the literary footsteps of popular New England writers, and we pay homage to SoCal fly fishing pioneer Sam Nix. Chico Fernandez provides a treatise on fly casting, Carlos Cortez schools us on not being mind-tricked by permit, and Michael Smith, another new contributor, reminds us to make time to fish.
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More about Saltwater fly fishing in Cape Cod…
George V. Roberts – Plymouth, Massachusetts
Mark White – Atlantic Striped Bass – A Species in Peril
