The Stalker

Dawn was still two hours away when the old man parked his Jeep and set off through the fields of wind-grass for the sea. On the rocky Massachusetts beach, he used a pebble to hone the three hooks hanging from a cigar-shaped yellow plug with a red nose. Then, peering out at the dark water from under his long-billed fisherman's cap, he began to cast. In gentle, precise rhythm, his rod whipped back and forth until he lifted a leathery thumb from the reel and the plug soared 190 ft. out into the Atlantic.

Nothing happened. He reeled in quickly, the plug streaking like a toy torpedo. For an hour he worked over a 100-yd. stretch of water like a master artilleryman laying down a barrage pattern. Nothing happened. But Oscar Flanders, finest surf caster on Martha's Vineyard, knew better than to expect an easy strike from a striped bass--a silver-green fighter with a flippant challenge that turns men into lifelong, zealous pursuers.

One of the most elusive fish in the sea, the striper is so unpredictable that surf casters have gone for years without a strike. Stripers can sulk offshore for hours far beyond the reach of a line, then flash for the beach on a whim. They can ignore the most ingenious lures bobbed past their noses by experts, then hit something splashed into the water by a novice. Toughest of all to figure are the canny ancients that go 60 lbs. and higher. "The big ones, they travel by themselves," said Oscar. "They like a big rock, and they settle under it for a few days. You got to think months ahead to which rock that big one is liable to pick."

Derby Days. Last week, along the Vineyard coast, Oscar was carefully working all the likely rocks that he had spotted in half a century of stalking the striper. The big ones were running in their annual fall migration from Maine back to the Chesapeake Bay spawning grounds they had left last spring. Determined to intercept them, Oscar and fellow zealots were getting up in the middle of the night and tramping 100 miles of Vineyard beaches in the island's 14th annual Striped Bass Derby, which has drawn 1,200 fishermen from as far as California and Nova Scotia.

No matter what he happened to hit during the monthlong derby, Oscar Flanders, 64, would still be regarded by the experts with the same reverential awe they reserve for the striper himself. A stumpy 230 lbs., he won last year with a 51-pounder that he promptly sold to "some city feller standing around. Gave me ten dollars." In a monumental battle Oscar once landed a 63-pounder--the island record for surf casting. "I've thrown back more fish than most men have caught," he says matter-of-factly. "Anything less than 30 lbs. doesn't interest me." He would never consider eating a striper he caught --he does not like the taste.

Night & Day. Oscar figures that interesting stripers bite mainly at night near high tide. By day, the sight of seagulls gliding over the water at close to stalling speed told him that schools of feeding fish (silversides, English herring, mullet) were boiling along the surface, and that stripers might be right behind. At no time did Oscar go more than ankle deep into the surf--believing, with his kind, that it is sinful for man to disturb the striper's water. He scorns newfangled reels that would lessen the challenge to his arm and eye.

Nor would Oscar think of using bait ("Them's use bait, they're stink fishermen").

Oscar's plugs hit the surface with short, sharp slaps. "The big ones, they get nerved up by the noise," he explained, "and maybe that's the best time--when they don't think, and want to get rid of the damned thing, and hit it. If he hits, he's a fighter. You see that pole bend down and that striper taking all your line and going out 500 ft., pulling like a bull, making circles, doubling back. Then he quiets down, and you think you've got him. You start bringing him in, and bang, he's off again, and if you don't know that trick of his, you've lost him."

In the three weeks the derby has run, Oscar's best is only a 20-pounder. He is undiscouraged. Says he: "What can be better than trying to work it out in your head, and in your heart, too, about the big fish in the ocean? It's what keeps a man alive. Worrying about stripers ain't going to hurt. No, sir. Only give a lot of walking and smelling and good living. Worrying about stripers, you don't grow so's you're ready to bark and quit on life."

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