Thursday, December 20, 2007
Fishing with Jack Brady is like being invited to a fish fry -- except on his birthday
Bill Cochran
Recent columns
Jack Brady was planning to celebrate his 74th birthday, and wanted to know if my wife, Katherine, and I would do him the honor of fishing with him. He has this long-held tradition of fishing on his mid-December birth date.
In reality, Brady spends a lot of days fishing. It is his job and his passion. He has been an angling guide since age 16, working out of the seaside village of Oyster on the southern end of Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
Brady was born just across the creek from where he now lives, a pearl of a setting that time pretty well has passed by. I fished with him in the early '70s, then lost contact. A couple years ago I was launching at Oyster and asked one of the locals a question. He said he didn’t know the answer but there was a guy living within sight of the ramp who would.
“His name is Jack Brady.”
“Jack Brady, the guide? I asked.
“Yeah. That’s him.”
Jack Brady with pre-birthday striped bass catch.
I knocked on his door and we have been fishing ever since. Brady has a shock of white hair, a delightful waterman’s dialect and a kind heart that delights in seeing a less skillful companion land a fish.
He didn’t actually use the words “do him the honor” when he invited us to his birthday outing. I added that. The honor is to get to fish with him. It is like being invited to a fish fry. He is that good.
We were striped bass fishing with Brady in the Chesapeake Bay, off Cape Charles, when he asked if we had plans for the next day, his birthday. As a rule, he fishes on the seaside of the Shore, but why burn gas on an offshore trip when you can be in the thick of stripers within sight of the Cape Charles? That’s where we fished, in full view of the Coast Guard tower, the cranes at the Bayshore Concrete plant, the town water tank, the brick buildings along Mason Avenue.
The striper migration in the Bay contains 30- to 60-pound fish. They are magnificent creatures, their broad backs olive in color, their silver sides etched with black, horizontal stripes, their bellies the color of fresh-fallen sleet. Some are 18- to 20-years old, and have traveled hundreds of miles, from as far away as New England, sometimes homing in on a particular spot, like the migrating songbird that nests every year on your porch column.
As they migrate down the Atlantic, they take a sharp turn into the Chesapeake Bay where they find a rich food supply of menhaden, or bunkers, as Brady calls them. They stall here, to enjoy a feeding fest, then head back into the Atlantic when the water gets too cold and continue southward.
No telling how many times they have escaped the hook or other predation or how few of their spawning mates overcame the odds necessary to live this long. These are the survivors: wise, resilient, powerful, mystic.
We landed three that measured 37 to 42 inches. You pretty well can figure a pound per inch for striper this size. The limit is one per day. Few one-fish limits are so imposing.
Our technique was to fish slithering eels under large, brightly colored bobbers, a fairly new method of striper fishing for the Bay that has become wildly popular and has been producing exceptional early winter catches.
The next morning, Brady wanted to get an ever earlier start, because we caught our three fish soon after we hit the water. So we met him just after first light and I shouted “Happy Birthday” as he eased his 24-year old boat, “Little Bit,” into the water. Each rod upright in a rack was equipped with a bright orange bobber, making it appear that Brady had spent the night decorating his boat for Christmas. The plan was to land our catch quickly and get out of the wind.
When we turned southward out of the Cape Charles Harbor, the Bay met us with angry 4- to 5-foot swells. It wasn’t pretty.
Brady began a zigzagging course, his eyes fixed on the Hummingbird locator that revealed big stripers flowing across the screen at a variety of depths, a bit like hot-air balloons moving along the horizon. We lowered our eels to them.
“I like to see them take that bobber down,” said Brady. “That’s what I like.”
It had worked the day before, and the day before that, but not today. Not on Brady’s birthday.
“They are steady coming,” he said, watching the locator, “but they ain’t biting. Open your mouth boys and eat that snake.”
Katherine was reliving “The Perfect Storm” when Brady said that stripers do some of their most vigorous feeding during rough conditions. They missed a perfect chance this time. There would be no birthday presents wrapped in silver and black.
CAPT. JACK BRADY goes fishes for flounder, croaker, cobia, tarpon, red drum and black drum in addition to stripers. He can be reached in Oyster at 757-331-2111.
COMING, PART II: All about eel fishing
