God and sinner reconciled
Join New York Times best-selling author Monte Burke on a fall fly-fishing adventure to Montauk where he pits his wits against battle-ready false albacore.
IT STARTS with the waiting, in that liminal period, when the indulgences of summer have come to an end, but the quickening of the fall has yet to begin. The stripers have left the sand flats for good, and the water has warmed and turned a Caribbean green, even here near the most populated city in the country. Schools of tiny silversides flash and flicker as they seek cover by the jetty rocks, untroubled for now. The light cool breath of the early mornings invigorates, and the slant of the sun brushes the city in the golden light of the Dutch Masters.
I await word from my offline network, carefully cultivated over the years and much more reliable than any online one, what with its unavoidable mix of trolls, mis-directors and braggarts, and its frequent hilarious chatboard misspellings.
Phat_Tony56: got some strippers off Coney last night!!!
Gin&Juice98: you da man, tony!
I wait.
I wait because the insanity of the fall hardtail run here in the northeast makes me feel sane. The fishing has the perfect mix of order and randomness. Real life, it seems, is either too orderly or too random.
The Montauk Point Lighthouse at Long Island — the backdrop to so many broken hearts and arm-wrenching fights.
First word usually comes in early September. Albies have been spotted to the north, in Nantucket, where they have joined their bonito brethren who, like finance bros and influencers, have been cavorting about that island for much of August. Not too long afterwards comes the wailing from the famed West Wall in Point Judith, and the reports from the boats off of Block and Fishers.
And then, finally, they’re here.
When it comes to albies, I prefer fishing from the shore to a boat. I like the flexibility of being able to come and go as I please. I feel freer. Shore fishing is undoubtedly a harder task. Any luck — good or bad — is earned, which makes any caught fish feel sweeter.
I start out east and, as the season progresses, follow the fish west, back toward home. There is a public beach on the North Fork, well-known as an albie spot. It’s a long drive — I have to leave at 4am to get there for the sunrise. The beach consists of thousands of small and smooth white, brown and slate-colored rocks which, somehow, are more difficult to traverse than even the softest sand. The water of the Sound here is clear. The albies like this spot, so say the old-timers, because of the trough that runs alongside the beach. Said trough supposedly gathers up bait and keeps it there, providing easy fodder.
On any given day, there can be nearly two dozen people lined up on the beach. All spin guys with the occasional exception. That exception, very often, is me.
Iridescent beauty.
When the fishing is on here, the albies run a circuit. They come zooming in and race along the shore, gobbling up bait, and then zip back out into the deeper water. Then, maybe 20 minutes later, they repeat the entire thing. When they hit the shore and run the beach, they cause something along the line of anglers akin to the wave in the stands of a football game or the chain reaction of falling dominoes. Everyone, in sequence, jolts to attention and begins casting ahead of the moving pod. Because I am throwing string, I usually get just one shot at the fish. Sometimes I miss them completely. Sometimes I don’t.
One year I was sidelined for two months after albie season with severe tennis elbow. It was worth it
Even when the albies aren’t showing, I blind cast. Again and again. You never know: the fish can be hanging around and, well, I’m not exactly doing anything else at the moment. One year I was sidelined for two months after albie season with severe tennis elbow. It was worth it.
A week or two later, I’ll move west to an inlet on the south side, which requires a drive through some of the most expensive real estate in the country. Hedgerows turn into beachgrass and sand dunes as house prices rise from $5 million to $20 million. Gatsby was ahead of his time. One never actually gets a glimpse of the owners of these seaside houses, not on weekdays, anyway, when, one presumes, they have used the community helipad to get to Manhattan to make hay. Instead, one sees legions of immigrant men in bandanas and sleeveless shirts and steel-toed boots who appear to spend more time at these houses than their owners do.
Word soon gets around — the albie carnival is in town.
In this inlet, the albies sometimes storm the rock wall, barbarians at the gate, and the action can be furious. Other times, one can spend long, fruitless hours staring at the swells coming in from the ocean, and the schools of tiny bait that bob up and down with them, making the occasional blind cast so as not to go mad.
And then, finally, I end albie season back on the jetty close to my home. Fishing there is something I’ve begun to question in middle age. The jetty is treacherous — the rocks are uneven and slippery. I have a friend who likes to say that you need only two things to fish this jetty: Korkers and a good life insurance policy. Once every few years someone dies out there, hit by a rogue wave and swept off. I no longer have the blind confidence of youth, when I used to attack the rocks and scramble swiftly over them. I am now cautious and slow, and this has, somewhat paradoxically, made the rocks even more dangerous, akin to driving tentatively on a Los Angeles highway. Still, I don’t foresee not doing it any time soon, mainly because there is nothing quite like standing at the very tip, in the middle of the ocean, scanning the horizon for birds and bait sprays and the silvered half-moon arcs of feeding albies.
There is something about playing a role — however small — in a mass animal migration that is atavistic
Albies do this to people. The startling pre-dawn alarm, the mainlined coffee, the four-hour round trip drives. I get racoon-eyed, stubble-cheeked, mumble-mouthed, and my hair cascades from the back of my hat like a relief pitcher’s. I feel exhausted but alive. I endure Boreas (the north wind) and fight Eurus (the east wind) to find Choros (the northwest wind). I can’t seem to live without it all. There is something about playing a role — however small — in a mass animal migration that is atavistic. It evokes a feeling that’s hard to put into words, something primal. Perhaps a bit like lust.
Here’s the thing, though. By mid-October of last season, I was getting desperate. The run had been weak the year before, and I had failed to hook an albie. This year, though the fish were in, they’d remained offshore, avoiding the beachside trough, the inlet, the jetty and me.
Brendan and Sam took pity. They own a boat together out on the North Fork, where the albies had been thick, even as they avoided the beaches.
“7am at the dock,” Brendan texted.
I was there at 6:30.
We shoved off and puttered around the North Fork for an hour. There were some blitzes, but they were all cocktail blues. “Greasers,” as Brendan called them. I respect bluefish but want nothing to do with them during the hardtail run.
We left for Montauk, blasting through the Race and by the ruins of Fort Tyler, built for the Spanish-American War, used as target practice for World War II bombers and now a refuge for a herd of curious seals. On the horizon to the east, one boat became two and then ten and then more. Brendan cut the engine before he reached the others, intending to nip on the edges.
Hanging on for dear life.
The October day felt odd. It was hot, still, breathless, more like the Gulf of Mexico than the northern Atlantic. The albies were in a strange mood, as well. There were small pods of them everywhere. Sam and I cast right into the middle of the scrums, stripping our flies hand-over-hand, bracing for what felt like the inevitable take. But it never came. We switched flies, tying on ones as sparse as pipe cleaners. We went down to 16 and then 12-pound test. Nothing.
Brendan eventually gave in and headed east to join the fleet. Everyone was roaring up to the pods, casting, putting them down. No one was hooking up.
In a cove on the eastern side of Montauk, we sidled up next to Dixon, the dean of these waters. He had masterfully carved off a separate school of fish that his clients had to themselves. Everyone knew Dixon, however, and the solitude wouldn’t last long once he was spotted.
“Can’t get them to bite,” Dixon yelled, his palms raised to the sky.
“We can’t either,” Sam shouted back.
And, just then, my line stopped. I did what I thought was an insistent but careful strip-set, but the tippet snapped. A classic Catch-22. The light tippet was likely the reason I both hooked and lost the albie.
And that was it. It took me nearly three hours to get home. A nor’easter kicked up the next day and scattered the albies. The Montauk portion of the season was over.
I didn’t give up and hoped the fish had been pushed west. I stood on the tip of my jetty and looked off towards Portugal. There were blitzes, boils, but all too far away for a cast. I went again and again. But the albies never came in close enough for a shot.
And now it was November, last licks. In recent years, with the warming water, the albies had stuck around for the first week of that month.
Brendan texted again. He’d moved the boat to Brooklyn. He and Sam were taking David out Saturday morning. He said they could squeeze me onboard.
We motored out of the mouth of Jamaica Bay. The day was cold, the sea a dull grey. We were all underdressed.
We rounded my jetty, so strange to view from this vantage point. I pictured myself on it, face into the wind and waves, and felt, for a moment, wistful. We entered the open ocean.
"I took one false cast and let it rip."
Hard-earned, sleek and muscular.
Brendan spotted some birds yo-yoing over some bait. But by the time I’d worked out my line, the pod had sounded, the birds moved on.
“There, to your right,” he said.
I took one false cast and let it rip. The small pink Clouser dropped into the right-hand side of the pile of fish. I stripped my line, and crouched, brow furrowed, as if what I was doing was the most important thing in the world. At the time, it felt like it was. My line went tight. I said nothing. I’d been at this too long to risk the jinx. The albie ran. I saw my backing and felt the thrill of not being in control of the pain or the pleasure that would result from all of this.
When the albie stopped its run, I reeled in as fast as I could, getting in all of my backing and part of my fly-line. Then it ran again.
“Let it go,” Brendan said.
I did. The backing showed again. I began to reel and could feel that this time, the albie was done. It shook its head a few times — the behavior of a fish that has nearly dislodged a hook — and I nearly panicked. And then it was at the boat and Brendan tailed it.
On its back, black vermicular lines were scribbled on a light green that had already started to fade. I held the albie for a second, this sleek, muscular and beautiful creature which felt like a microcosm of the whole wild world. And I dropped it back in, head-first. The fish nodded for a second, like a man shaken awake from a snooze on the subway, and then sped away.
I felt jubilation but also a tinge of sadness. This quest that had animated me for almost two seasons was complete. I gave my boatmates hugs. They seemed genuinely happy for me. It was one of the nicest things that had been done for me in a long while.
Like the cigarette smoker who, with each subsequent dart, tries to replicate the buzz of the day’s first puff
We fished for another hour-and-a-half, trying to time casts for the pods of fish, which were maddeningly popping up and down quickly and without any rhythm. We got no other bites. I was OK with that. I only needed one. Craving more seemed gluttonous and anyway any additional fish offer only diminished returns, like the cigarette smoker who, with each subsequent dart, tries to replicate the buzz of the day’s first puff.
And just like that, it was all over. I took my gear home, rinsed it and then stored it. And it all ended as it had begun, with the waiting.
PHOTOGRAPHY: JAMES LEVISON
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Monte Burke
Monte Burke is the New York Times best-selling author of Men of Troy, Rivers Always Reach the Sea, Lords of the Fly and Saban. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughters.
