The Birds and the Kayak

Originally published in Fly Fisherman Magazine

Plovers at dusk, Wales, UK. Photo by the author.

The terns fly higher, scanning, spreading out now that the blitz has ended, calling to each other. Sometimes, I swear I can understand them, especially after fishing out here with them for a stretch of days in a row, like this last week, the small, peanut bunker arriving in numbers, huge silvery pods stretching out across the harbor for the first time in several years now, snapper blues, harbor blues, big choppers all joining in on the fun (and at night the big striped bass move in to clean up the mess). “Anything your way,” a tern calls, inquisitive, anxious. 

“No,” another replies. “Lots of bunker everywhere, but nothing nervous right now, nothing under them.”

“Wait, what’s that?”  He dives low, pivoting his wings in a circle to hold inches above the water. “Nothing.”

Then far off, near shore, “Here here here they come. Hurry!  Oh boy!” all of them calling out in unison now, that quick, intense, sharp screech, terns sailing in from every corner of the harbor, the big splashes (think bowling balls dropped in the water) erupting from out of nowhere—and all this means the blues are chopping the peanut bunker, baby menhaden, to pieces on the surface and leaving plenty of scraps. 

I’m out here in my kayak, hunting too, the birds my scouts, extensions of my eyes, ears, sign posts in this roadless place, the Long Island Sound. To fish here is to rely on, to join the ranks of the birds, especially the terns, so quick, who see everything and are the most dependable—unlike the laughing gulls who will repeatedly swoop down and snatch at your fly and get worked up over any bait, even if nothing is eating it. To fish for blues, striped bass, false albacore from a kayak is to become wholly integrated into the rhythm of the ecosystem; find schools of baitfish, find the birds “working,” as they say, working as hard as me, and you will find fish. Casting to them with a fly rod from a kayak with flies I’ve tied myself makes me feel even more a part of things, reliant on my own skill and creativity and strength. 

This all becomes especially apparent when the big motor boats show up, roaring in full steam ahead, cutting their engines at the last second as the birds scatter, the fish sound, three or four men muscling up to the side and chucking enormous, flashy lures, all manner of treble hooks dangling from beneath them, out into the waves of their own wake that has nearly swamped me. On the day I write a draft of this essay, one boater cast a plug within just a few inches of my kayak because a few bluefish were boiling there, and I had to change my own cast in mid-air so as not to hook his line. When I see them in all their fury and noise and excitement and desperation, I feel all the more pleased with my not-even-15-foot kayak, my inexpensive, 9-weight fly rod and reel, sitting there only inches from the surface like a shorebird positioned right in the midst of the blues, seeing their eyes, hearing their sharp-sharp teeth snapping as they boil at the surface. 

These boat fishermen look down at me and laugh. They tell me I’m crazy to be out here like this, even when the seas are flat calm. I half joke with them that their wake was the most dangerous thing I’ve encountered all day, and they don’t laugh. Once, one told me a joke:  “What do you call a kayaker in the Thimble Islands? …A speed bump.”  

I think to myself this is the only way to fish, to be a part of it like this, to know that if you hook a double-digit blue or striped bass, you’re going to take a little ride, what whalers used to call a “Nantucket sleigh ride.” Once, a particularly large blue, pushing close to 20 pounds, towed me along for nearly a mile. I think of the blue I caught just today who took me into my backing for the first time this year, who came up to the surface near the kayak and just held there for a minute or two looking at me hard, his head half out of the water from six feet away, staring right into my eyes, all the while the birds screaming around him. When I finally convinced him to give me my fly back, pinning him against the side of the kayak, carefully dislodging the hook from the corner of his mouth, he soaked me with a big splash of his tail…. Now that’s fishing. I was right down there at his level, grabbing him with my hands as the birds grabbed at pieces of chopped baitfish. Then I was off, following the birds again, 100, now 200 yards away, the boaters starting up their motors, roaring alongside, certain to startle them off again….

Sometimes when I can smell them feeding, the oily sweet smell of chopped baitfish suddenly thick and strong and all around me, I cast out and get my popper to chugging along behind me as I paddle, my rod propped between the back of my leg and the gunwale, and one is on well before the birds have even shown—though within a few seconds, they’re sure to come swooping in. They are alert to everything, the sound of the blue smashing my fly, the sight of the boiling water behind me, the other baitfish now dashing away in silvery waves…. 

Following the birds, fishing close to the surface with them, the swish and dip of my kayak blade like my own set of wings, just feels more honest to me, more right. It’s connected in some way to preferring to fish bamboo rods for trout these days; my seven-foot Horrocks and Ibbotson Tonka Prince I got for a song really got my cane blood flowing. I also have an eight and a half foot Granger six-weight I love dearly, though it’s on the heavy side and hard to cast all day. I’ll never forget the guide on the Bighorn River leaving the poor casters he was working for to come downstream and chat with me about my “straw” rod, as he called it. “Fishing straw, I see,” he said, and I handed it to him, and he cast out a length of line, said “nice,” then handed it back to me and returned to his clients. 

A good cane rod, fishing in the saltwater from a kayak, listening to, learning from the birds…these all make fishing a more tactile, more close-to-the-bone experience. It’s akin to lugging my canoe on my shoulders several miles into an Adirondack pond I know I will fish all alone but for a beaver splashing his big, flat tail at me in warning, several loons, eagles and ravens calling out…or, wading slowly across a long, hot Bahamian flat to get to the mouth of a creek a local fisherman has told me is where bonefish will often gather…or, feeling the subtle tap against the back of my leg where I have wedged my fly rod as I paddle slowly along in the dead-dark of night, knowing when I lift it, the big striper will be there, turning me around in the dark, pulling me out into the darker-still, offshore distance, across unseen waves….

Give me that 10-inch native brookie in a small stream, that slow, relaxed pull of a cane rod in my hands, that high-jumping Adirondack smallmouth caught after a long day of portaging my gear into this high mountain lake, the big cow striper I slide up over the gunwales and turn my headlamp on finally to see her glittering, silver skin, those wide black lines…and the birds, the birds above it all on a bright summer day watching, diving, telling me everything I need to know.

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