Thanks to Dan Dugan of Wilmington, Delaware for sending me this great fish tale! Dan uses the nickname Holy Cow in his e-mail address and in this cast, it seems to have been a premonition! Dan caught his slammer on the beach at Cape Cod on 9/21/01. So you see, fella's, this year is just starting to open up! Dan, your T-shirt and subscription are on the way...

With my flash light on and a lid full of 16 inch American green eels and a surf caster bag full of the best wood plugs made by man; I slung my eel out about ever 100 to 150 feet. I threw eels out around the washed out cove. It was black out... I knew the hurricane was making its way up the coast from the south... I came to the Chids Point where 1000s of pounds of Bass were landed and released just days before. I worked up and down that spot, over and over. I tired after many hours of casting. I decided to make one last case out on to the completely covered point before calling it quits. WHACK... Hours of casting and walking and I was on... I was hooked up... What joy!!! The fish didn't seem like big Momma Cow because she just didn't run hard and fast. This one stay in close to the surf. I later figured the ragging waves kept Momma Cow in tight to the beach. I checked my drag like always and realized that Momma Cow was not going to need to be dragged down. She was very heavy, but didn't exert the expected a tug of war . I kept the drag as loose as possible and walked with her along the shore, staying out in front of her as long as possible. She took five good runs to try for freedom. It all appeared to happened so quickly. It seemed maybe 5 minutes. Finally, one of those big waves pushed her up onto the sand. I turned my light on to that Momma Cow of a dream come true... I only gazed in amazement. I wonder if it could be a fifty! I never saw one, so I measured Momma Cow... 54 INCHES! Bob , then Joe, then Don came off the surf and said "YO What's Up!!!" Ken Comes up and picks Momma cow up. "WOW" Bob says "that's bigger than the 46 pounder I had the other day" Ken puts her on the Scale... She weighed 58.4 pounds... Thank you lord in heaven!!! The Biggest Striped Bass I ever saw!!! That's my story!!!

Sharks from the Surf?

HOW DO THEY SURFCAST IN AFRICA? This is how! And we think we have a slammer when we land a 30 pound striper. I was told that these fish all came north east of Johannesburg during the summer. The rods these guys use are 12-14 feet long! Typically, a few guys will share in the glory of a fish like this, handing off the rod to their mates when tiring. A good gaff is a necessity to land one of these beasts. It took over an hour to land the shark, and a mile of open beach! I don't even want to think about how long it took to land the ray.

Now that is extreme!

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Skunked all Night!

NORTH FORK WILLY and his pal Tony were having a very slow night of fishing in Montauk's famed "Land of the Giants". It seemed that they spent the better part of the night drowning their supply of eels. The sun came up and my illustrious friends decided to call off their expedition. As they prepared to depart with the dawn, Bill noticed a swirl in the rocks about 100 yards from where they spent the night. One short move, and these fellows were into a sunrise blitz of big fish! And this all at near dead low water... A passing caster was kind enough to snap their picture with Bill's camera- and Viola!- a classic photo. This one would make a great poster.

Fishing, the Easy Way!

WHEN I STARTED this crazy sport of swimfishing, (skishing) I never dreamed that it would become the most sucessful technique of surfcasting yet! I must admit, looking at this photo, it does look a bit extreme...

Bucktails on the Cape?

DICK NICHOLSON took this nice striper of 23#, 39" last night (6/2) in the fog in the Atlantic surf on a white bucktail with red curlytail, somewhere near Wellfleet Mass.

"Hey, Paul, are you gonna put a real fish on your website? (I fished the

bucktail for about 2 hrs before getting this one on outgoing tide.) No one

uses bucktails on the Cape ...until now!"

So what is the story with you backwards New Englanders? Have you never heard of real fishing? You know, with a jig! 'Cause in case you didn't notice, your beaches are made of the same stuff we have in MONTAUK, and we catch BIG fish with Bucktails all the time!

P.S. Dick, in MONTAUK, we call this fish a RAT, and it usually doesn't take 2 HOURS to hook!

You guys think you can fish?

TAKE A LOOK at what lovely Debbie Berkeley brought home after a romantic trip to the Cape with her husband in 1989! This striper was caught by Debbie using a 2 oz Hopkins in the surf. The beast is over 50 pounds! Keep on dreamin' fellas!