For various reasons I've managed not to catch a striper in almost two weeks -- the reasons arising predominantly from not having fished.
Last night it hit me that Nov. 3 was the date of my last striper of last year, and before I started actually believing my various rationalizations about why it was OK for the season to slip away because it had been a great season (etc.), I made a midnight trip to Falmouth last night.
I'm not trying to be coy about the spot -- it's a river and there's a bridge over it and experience has shown that it can take very limited pressure. But there are a few places like that and they probably all fish the same.
Anyway, I caught 2 fish in fairly short oder, then spent an hour not catching anything else. My experience both here and in other places where fish gather in a modest sized flow by a bridge is that I can catch one on each side of the bridge and then they're spooked. So, two at once was very good news.
And the first of the fish was a fat 20+ inches...5 lbs if it's physically possible for fish that size to get that heavy. Both fish made strong repeated runs that let me get them on the flyreel quickly and took drag. I wasn't taking any chances last night. I needed to land these fish.
The sky was crystalline, a shooting star traced the arc of the river. The fish are still in there.