In 1978 we spent our first year fishing Monomoy from the surf. We were a rag tag bunch from Worcester MA. To us Worcester was the center of the striper fishing universe due to so many of the early "pioneers" of fishing the Cape came from there. If you weren't a Wormtown striper fisher you didn't count. O f course we were all heavily influenced by Woolner's writing in our local paper, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Woolner Bros. Outdoor TV Show and Slatwater Sportsman always featured a central MA Worcester area local in it's monthly publications.
All this led folks to capitalize on that "influence". Some started writing about it. Some moved to the Cape and became commercial striper fisherman or charter skippers, some of us in high school came to seek jobs on those smae charter boats. Anyway, in 1976 I met a guy who ran a tackle business out of his house on Hamilton Street in Worcester named #^&#^&#^&#^& Pleska and his youngest son Wayne. #^&#^&#^&#^& was selling tackle out of a room on second floor apartment. Most of the stuff he sold was geared to striper fishing. He had a real job as machinist in a small foundry in town during the day but his real ambition was to become a tackle distributor.
He made weekly trips to Cape Cod in his chevy station wagon (we called it a beach wagon) loaded with all sorts of plugs, rods, blanks etc., all the trappings needed to catch stripers. He often helped folks get started in the tackle shop business with his easy credit terms. He was a pants pocket business man. You could pay in cash, fish, lobsters, booze and other "ways".
Well in the summer of 1978 we would often meet or follow #^&#^&#^&#^& on his rounds on the Cape. If we had room in our vehicles he would load us up as well and we would make the rounds on Friday's. We would stop at places like MacReed's, Tony C's Bass Run, and numerous other shops around the Cape. He had his first real tackle shop now, a store front on Grafton Street in Worcester and was doing quite well, he quit his day job and had so many customers business was coming out his ears. In order to pay back his clients somehow he would take them to Monomoy to fish often enabling his clients to score a lot of big fish. One day while riding with him on his route he mentioned to me that there must be a better way he could show his customers his appreciation. I jkingly said to him "maybe you could get some hookers and show these guys a good time on you, booze, broads etc. you know"?
He said nothing and we continued on our rounds for the day ending up as usual on Monomoy that night to surfcast. Several weeks went by and I happened to be down on vacation and decided to take the skiff out to the island to fish. When I got to Claflin's Landing in Chatham that evening I noticed #^&#^&#^&#^&'s tan station wagon and several other trucks I knew to be some of his clients. I launched my skiff and was on my way down the length of Pleasant Bay, past Morris Island then the northern channel along Nauset and the green can and back to Monomoy.
As I pulled up and waited for the right sequence of waves so I could land my skiff in the surf I noticed a bright fire from up in the dunes and I could make out laughing and shouting. Someone was having a party out there it seemed.
I landed, jumped out and threw the 3 foor piece of 3 inch pvc tube under the keel and rolled her up the beach above high water. Before I knew it someone was waddling up to me and sluring his speech with a bottle of something in his hand said "Da youse shnow #^&#^&#^&#^&ie Pleshka" Heesh a Hell of a guy! says he and wanders off into the dunes back to the party location.
So... being curious I carefully made my way up to the scene and lo and behold there was a tent and in the tent was a light shining which played out shadows onto the walls on the tent backlighting what was going on in the tent. I was never a prude but my jaw dropped as I saw the silhouettes of a woman on her knees "satisfying" someone standing with what could be recognized as waders and pants around his ankles. A quick glance over to the fire going beside the tent and there was #^&#^&#^&#^&, bottle in hand yelling "who's next"!
Well he had taken my suggestion to heart and found the hooker and I don't know what she was paid but there she was in a nylon tent on Monomoy Island. I wanted no part of it and wandered off along the beach going farther south to the new cut through and every once in awhile casting a glance back to the light in the dunes and shaking my head.
I cannot remember if I caught anything that night. I never told his son Wayne what I saw and don't know if he ever found out. #^&#^&#^&#^& passed away several years later from a heart attack at 45 years old. Too much chinese food, booze, smoking and loose women. Unfortunately his sone Wayne went the same way at roughly the same age of the same thing. He opened up a new world of striper fishing to me, many of the people I idolized and still do he introduced me to and the many places on Cape I learned to fish were from him and his connections. He was wild and times moody to the extreme and at those times you learned to stay away. But he was my friend and I miss him and those days as well.
But most of all, no matter how many fifties he caught, how many places we fished I will remember most the night #^&#^&#^&#^& Pleska brought a hooker and a tent to Monomoy Island.
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