January Fishing

Matt Fitzpatrick intercepted me in the parking lot of our workplace. "So, you feel like fishing tomorrow night?" "Sure," I replied. "Think we'll hook anything?" His answer was "yeah, probably" and that was all I needed.

We met in Plymouth on this cold, windy night and drove together in Matt's truck to our destination of winter fishing which was only a few miles south. It was fun to be back in action on the water, but odd at the same time. Walking around with a fishing rod on January 9th in Massachusetts just felt weird.

But that wore off almost as soon as we arrived at Matt's "secret" destination. This was a place I was actually quite familiar with already, but didn't realize it held winter stripers. We pulled our gear out of the back of the truck and finished the coffees that we grabbed on the way. Then we opened a couple of beers to make it an event.

Matt had his first fish on his second cast. I soon followed with two in a row. Then Matt pulled ahead and hauled in a total of 7 stripers. These were all surprisingly fat and fiesty. I had a couple of additional fish on but lost them, as did Matt.

After some time we decided to quit and head home. It was a thrill to hookup in January. I'll be back.