I fished since I was a small boy growing up next to the Fore River in Braintree. I recall waking up early in the morning and taking my small freshwater Zebco rod down to Watson Park on the river, stopping at Bra-Wey Sports on the way to pick up a box of sea-worms. My boyhood friend Jimmy and I would catch flounder and tommy-cod all morning.....good times. Mostly I fished sweetwater though. My Dad worked a summer job at a private pond in Weston that had a swimming pond and a pond for boating and fishing right next to each other. I spent many hours wetting a line on lazy summer days there while my Dad worked. I eventually got older and my interests changed until I had young sons and seperated from my wife. My sons were about 2 and 3 years old, I did not have any money to spare at the time so we went fishing quite a bit at Pond Meadow in Braintree. The kids would catch sunfish, catfish and largemouth while soaking worms and shiners. We spent alot of time there when they were young and we had alot of great days. Then one day we were enjoying an August afternoon at Nantasket Beach in Hull. The boys, they were about 5 and 6 by this time, came running up to me from the water screaming how there were "big" fish swimming right in the water with them. I knew they must be bass chasing the fluttering bait I had seen in the water. I went down to the water with them and sure enough they were stripers. I had never seen them before in person. I took turns holding my boys high over my head so they could see the stripers swimming right by us. They said to me on the way home, "can we go fishing for stripers Daddy"? I had never fished for stripers before and knew very little about it, but my Dad did have some old rods and reels in the basement that had not been used in years so I told them the next weekend that we would fish for the stripers. We went to a local B & T and took the old rods with us to see what we needed to make them fishable. I bumped into a buddy of mine that I knew fished for stripers and he took a look at my gear and laughed. He invited us to join him down Hull Gut as he had some extra rods and bait and we would get the kids some fish he said. My sons each caught their first stripers that day, shorts about 16-18 inches long but to them they seemed like giants! I have the pictures of us from that day hanging on my living room wall, the boys each holding their fish up and smiling from ear to ear. Those pictures are one of my most prized possesions.
After that, I was intrigued about these stripers and got more and more interested in fishing for them. It become a burning passion for me that has lasted, must be about 6 or 7 years now. My first keeper (after busting my butt for over a year and reading everything I could get my hands on) pushed me over the edge. I was a full blown striper addict! Little did I know it would get worse! Now here I am 6 years later and it consumes me. I got a beach buggy, VP of MSBA 2 times now, wrapping my own rod, building my own plugs (and catching fish on them) and most of all the greatest benefit has been meeting many new friends who have taught me so much.
I have found that striper fishing was the thing I had been looking for my whole life that I was born to do. When will the hunger for more be sated? Hopefully never.
