Neighbourhood Folks and Striped Bass Capture

Coxsackie, New York - 11 kilometres walked

I spent the day toothbrush-cleaning shrouds, walking to the yacht club to arrange for dockage, stretching, eating, walking some more, cleaning shrouds, talking to my girls, cooking and eating, watching Mad Max - The Road Warrior, a bit more shroud cleaning, then finished the day with an evening stroll around town and captured nocturnal images of Coxsackie.

I also met some interesting people. Patrick Ray is a local man whose family has been living in the area for three hundred years. Towns south and north of here are named after one of his great grandfathers. One side of his family - the Broncks - lent their name (with some stylistic changes) to the borough of the Bronx in New York City, as owners of large tracts of land there.

Patrick stopped by to introduce himself and we spent a very long time chatting. I expect I will be seeing more of Patrick as I can see his house from the boat.

Later in the morning sailboat Panacea arrived and I helped them to land and get tied to the dock. Perry and Cathy live in Buffalo but their home marina is Rochester and they similarily spent the winter in the Bahamas. I am quite sure we saw their boat somewhere along the way. I chatted with them for a while (lovely people), then Patrick appeared and told them his family history, which is how I was able to remember it. When came a natural break in the conversation, I slipped away, back to my shroud toothbrushing, but pointed Perry and Cathy in the direction of The Yellow Deli for lunch.

Sometime around 5pm a fishing family arrived and set up shop on the dock beside SeaLight. She was a skinny blonde, with dark sunglasses and ripped jeans, mainly preoccupied with controllling their barky and yanky Shelty dog who pulled her sideways off her lounge chair several times, landing her on the ground with a thud. The dad was a hulk of a man, bearded, and wore a jersey stamped on the back with SUGAR DADDY 69. He looked like he could drink a lot of Miller Lite. They had two young boys, ravenously excited about the fishing expedition and, surprisingly, it was their first time striper fishing with their dad.

I continued toothbrushing the shrouds but watched them with my peripheral. Sugar Daddy knew what he was doing, and was teaching his boys, with patience, the tecnique for catching stripers. He had the older boy hold a large dip net in the water on shore as he casted out a huge yellow rubber bait and reeled it in. This attracted herring fish and he would lead them across the net then signal the lad to pull it out. Every third attempt the boy would get the timing right and capture a herring, which he would run over to the dock as it flopped in the net, then drop it into the water to keep it alive. Sugar Daddy would then rig up another rod with a simple j-hook and weights, attach the live herring to it, then cast it far out into the river. He had two rods at a time set and the younger brother sat watching the lines as Sugar Daddy and the older boy returned to catch more herring.

With regularity, one of the rods would begin jerking and Sugar Daddy would holler at the boy to grab it and start reeling, keeping the rod tip up. Always keep the rod tip up, first rule of fishing. The first striper I saw them catch was a whopper, probably fifteen pounds. I put down my toothbrush to get a closer look and Sugar Daddy told me that was just a small one and he'd caught them up to fifty pounds off this dock.

I watched them catch three stripers, all of roughly the same size, and they returned each of them to the water. I considered asking them to give me a fish, but then realized I did not have enough available freezer space on the boat for a tray of breakfast sausages, never mind ten pounds of fresh fish fillets.

It was time to retire the toothbrushing for the day so I packed up my cleaning supplies, left the fisherman casting baits on the dock, and retired to the comfort of SeaLight's cabin, re-emerging only after dark, once all the fishermen had left, for the evening stroll.