I am fortunate to be able to walk 20 steps to one of the best spots in the whole country for catching blues: Wasque is an Algonquin Indian word for “wannasque,’’ or “the ending.’’ It is, truly, the end of the Vineyard. Where Wasque Beach sticks out into the water, two currents converge and move as fast as 8 feet per second. While it is extremely dangerous to swim here, the rip is the perfect convergence for bluefish on their way from as far south as Florida to spawn up north.
And they are ravenous. Spencer Fullerton Baird (1823-87), the first head of the now defunct US Commission of Fish and Fisheries, called the bluefish “an animated chopping machine.’’ They will eat anything alive, including their young and their siblings. During a “blues blitz,’’ when so many fish swarm around the rip they make the water froth, some anglers say you could throw an old shoe in the water and a blue would bite. I prefer a metal jig: Kastmaster or Krokodile, and after that, poppers, the surf caster’s equivalent of the fly rodder’s floating fly, because it’s exciting to see the wind-blown spray from a smashing strike.
One windy, overcast day in May I went down to the beach. While no blitz had occurred, there were a lot of lines in the water. I was reeling in a ballistic missile, watching it skip and splash along the surface, when a true “slammer’’ (as opposed to a smaller blue, under a foot, called a “schoolie’’) exploded out of the water and took the lure. The line immediately went taut.
I adjusted the drag knob on top of the reel to let line out. The massive blue tugged for a good five or six minutes before it began to swim parallel to the shore. I slowly followed it down the beach, apologetically ducking under others’ lines. “Looks like you got yourself an old fashioned clothesline,’’ said one man, referring to the fact that I wasn’t making any headway reeling the fish in.
