Opening Daze: 2026

One weekend each spring

camping, camaraderie;
tradition lives on.

Re-Cover

The number of false alarms was starting to remind me of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. The flag on one of my Heritage Lakers kept going up with nothing to show for it. There was zero wind to speak of that day, and my bait was the large and dead variety. Something was messing with me. Still, sooner or later, I just knew I was going to walk up to a spinning spool. I made a small adjustment by lowering the bait, laying it directly on the silty bottom. The next flag was the one. It turned out to be the largest northern pike I had ever landed, through the ice or otherwise. 

That series of events took place one mild afternoon in January 2017. Fast forward eight years and a photograph of me releasing the fish, taken by Aaron Swanson, now graces the cover of The Fisherman magazine. The new cover of an old catch has been a fun walk down memory lane. It's good timing, too, considering the Northeast is finally experiencing a winter like the old days. Unlike the last two years, there is no shortage of ice fishing opportunities. I'm trying to get out as much as I can, revisiting old haunts and even getting my girls on the ice with me. If not now, when? 

Tight lines and stay safe out there!

Legend of the Surf

Editor's Note: 

Back in 2012, I had the opportunity to interview a living legend of surf fishing. By that point in time, though he’s too humble to acknowledge it, Pat Abate had long earned a reputation throughout the Northeast as a bonified surf sharpie; a member of the old guard with a knack for sniffing out big striped bass. It was also a time when Pat owned River's End in Old Saybrook, one of the more premier fishing outfitters in southern New England. For someone like me, who was at the pinnacle of my surf fishing effort and interest, it was an awesome experience to hear some of Pat's insights and stories. He eventually sold River's End and retired, allowing for more time on the water instead of behind the counter. It should come as a surprise to no one that Pat is not only an awesome angler, but also a salt of the earth kind of guy who is still plugging away in the surf. 

One of the walls in River's End is adorned with hundreds of lures that would make any striped bass fisherman drool. Above the ones for sale however, hang special, battle-worn plugs—each with their own story to tell. Pat pointed to a cracked green needlefish and said he found it one day at Southwest Point on Block Island. With a black Sharpie, Pat added some mackerel markings and took it with him fishing later that night. In Dories Cove, in a howling northwesterly wind, the newly found needlefish accounted for eight giant striped bass up to 55-pounds! The magic finally ended when the lure's side cracked open after hitting a rock on a fateful backcast. Pat said it lost its “mojo” and he retired it as one hell of a conversation piece.

Sitting in his office, I asked Pat about a blown-up surf casting photo hanging on the wall. As the story goes, years ago while napping on Nauset Beach, a crew from Sperry shoes knocked on the window of Pat's beach buggy and asked him to take part in a photo shoot. Next thing he knew, Pat was being photographed casting a needlefish in the suds while wearing Sperry shoes two sizes too small. They must have forgotten they also outfitted him with a mic and Pat could only laugh while hearing the crew second guessing that "he's too old for this” and "we'd better shoot from the rear.” In the end, Pat became “Mr. March” in a Sperry sports calendar and his life-size poster hung for a while at the Kittery outlet store. It turns out that Pat can now add modeling to his impressive resume. 

KB: Who got you into fishing and how old were you?

PA: I was about 12 or 13 and living in Brooklyn at the time. I had an uncle who as an avid fisherman. I had fished for sunfish in Prospect Park and things like that, but he took me out fluke and porgy fishing and I got hooked. New York City isn’t the ideal place for saltwater fishing, though you’d be surprised how many people travel the subway with 10-foot rods to the beaches or party boats in Sheepshead Bay. At that time, you couldn’t drive until you were 18, so you really had to depend on public transportation or someone over 18 to take you.

KB: Do you remember the first big striped bass that got you hooked into surfcasting?

PA: Well I was hooked into surfcasting years and years before I ever caught a big striper. I fished the Rockaways and places like that and, to us at that time, a 10 or 12-pound striper was about as big as we’d seen. It wasn’t until a trip to Nantucket in ’67 when I caught what I considered to be a big bass, a 29-pounder. I think I got it on a Rabbit plug, similar to what today you would call a Robert’s Ranger. At that time they were made of wood. A friend of mind had made some that he saw in a Saltwater Sportsman article. That was my first big bass; breaking the ice was the hardest part. But there weren’t a lot of big bass around then. The only guys that I knew who caught big bass were the guys that fished the jetties. Those were the idols to a surfcaster at that time, the Al Bensten’s and those guys.

A younger Pat with a nice bass from the rocks.

KB: When and what made you get into the tackle shop business?

PA: I sold some tackle mail-order back in the early 80’s; odds and ends, droppers and stuff like that. Then I got into River’s End in ’86. I was going to be a silent partner and then I turned into an unsilent partner [laughs]. My job was transferred from Connecticut to New York and I struggled to get into this lifestyle of commuting to the City. I tried it for one week, didn’t like it and quit. Been here since then...

KB: Were you always in this location?

PA: I started out with a partner named Sherwood Lincoln and we had an 800-sq. foot shop down the  street. It was an un-insulated building with a woodstove to heat it. You couldn’t leave the shop for more than 12 hours unattended because the pipes would freeze. So we basically never closed [laughs]. This is River’s End’s 27 th year in business. We kind of grew by drips and drabs. When this building became available, it took about eight months to renovate it. Now we have just under 4,000-sq. feet.

KB: After all this time behind the counter, what’s your favorite part about the business?

PA: Being behind the counter [laughs]. I hate the paperwork and I had no idea when I got into retail. All I thought was that you had to sell stuff. I had no idea that you had to buy the stuff to sell it and you had to pay for it. But there’s an awful lot of behind the scenes stuff that you never see. Like any small business, you’ve a lot of paperwork and it takes a lot of time to buy the right stuff at the right place, and keep the shelves stocked.

KB: If you could travel anywhere in the world for fishing, where would you go and what would you fish for?

PA: My favorite fishing is bonefishing. The only time I fly-fish is for bonefish. It’s the most exciting fishing that I do. There are probably other things, but it’s accessible. Certainly I don’t have to invest in a couple hundred thousand dollar boat to get out to the canyons to tuna fish. You can go with the simplest of gear, walk the flats on your own, be by yourself, on foot, wading, and it’s 70% hunting, 30% fishing. You are in the middle of this ecosystem as well – there are predators, there’s prey, there’s bait; I find there are slow times, but every hour’s exciting whether you’re catching fish or not. You’re hunting when you’re not fishing, so you’re always actively doing something. I try to go to Acklins Island in the Bahamas at least once a year. It’s a very primitive island, very few inhabitants and almost all the flats are accessible by car.

KB: If you could only surf fish one state for the rest of your days, which would it be?

PA: If I had to pick a state it would be Rhode Island for the access. Rhode Island not only has the beaches, breachways and ponds, but there are a lot of different things going on in RI—basically a year-round fishery if you want to pursue it. I probably do most of my fishing within a five mile radius of the shop; it’s not necessarily the best waters, but it’s probably what I know best and what I have the best access to and, as far as time goes, the most time I can spend. It would be nice to be on Cuttyhunk or Block all the time, but you have to have the access, the time and everything else that goes with it.

KB: If you could use one lure for the rest of your fishing what would it be?

PA: Is a rigged eel a lure? [laughs]

KB: That’s a good answer! What direction do you see surfcasting headed? Is wetsuit fishing just a fad?

PA: I think what surfcasting has become is extreme fishing. It’s very much a younger man’s game; more aggressive fishermen do a lot better at it. I think wader fishermen are going to be in the minority. I think there are some really good fishermen now – if these fishermen were around when the bass were around, boy would they’ve hammered fish. But a lot of times people concentrate more on getting to a rock and falling off that rock and getting on that one rock. But when you really survey the situation, the best spot to be may be the rock inside of that that is reaching fishable water. I think a lot of people that are new to it seem to be more obsessed with getting out on a rock than getting to the right location. Tim Coleman, who I fished with for a long, long time, rarely even wore waders.

KB: Thanks so much for the opportunity, Pat.

Summer Medley

Salt air and fireflies.

Flounder, quahogs, and blue claws. 

Summer ends too soon.

My brother summited California's Mount Whitney and left a Connecticut Yankee sticker.

One-Day Season

Last weekend's short-lived arctic blast produced just enough ice in Connecticut for one memorable day of hardwater fishing. Knowing this was essentially a one-day season, we got an early start and had lines in the water before first light. The little ice we had was strong and crystal clear. The first spud into it sent a loud reverberation across the waterbody. By mid-morning the ice was turning grey with air bubbles. By early afternoon, there was more water on top than there was ice below. It was time to go home. 

Those hours in between though were glorious. It was a scalding hot bite at times; the type of action you dream about when a lake or pond first freezes over. There was a point when I had three of my allotted six lines out of the water at once because I was unhooking fish and rebaiting tip-ups. Four of us fished together and we all caught our target species of northern pike, with a few good ones in the mix. A highlight for me was catching three of them by rod and reel. Something I have been exploring more of and recently wrote an article about.

It's not lost on me how lucky I was to get in a few hours of ice time this winter. The stars and moon aligned with the conditions, timing and location. For how crappy this winter has been in terms of local hardwater opportunities, this was an outing I will never forget. 

Chain Gang

Most years, during late fall and early winter, there are a few weeks between hanging up my saltwater gear and tuning up my ice fishing equipment. It's a time when I like to visit a favorite body of water in Connecticut—a challenging fishery with incredible scenery where I have spent many a chilly outing chasing trout and walleye.

Not many lakes and ponds in my home state are home to both walleye and the fast-growing seeforellen brown trout. Throw in a healthy population of smallies and crappie and, at least to me, that rounds out a desirable lineup of target species. And here, they all have the potential to reach true trophy size—think state record potential. 

One reason for this is their diet consists mostly of landlocked alewives, which you can see schools of dimpling the surface on calm mornings. Another reason these fish have the ability to grow so large are the strict angling regulations in place. Rules that limit big chunks of when, where, and how you can fish, which ultimately deter some anglers from even bothering to try.

All that said, for me, it's the chance of encountering something genuinely special on any given outing that is a main motivator for logging hours and miles along its rocky shores. Over the years, more times than I'd like to admit, I have gone home without catching a single fish. Yet each trip, skunk or success, I learn from, and if you are going to get blanked, it may as well be at a place as beautiful as this.

This past November and December I was only able to make three trips—two morning shifts and one evening. What's more sad than the lack of time I spent there were my piss poor results. I landed a handful of fish, but none that I actually set out to catch. One was a brown bullhead that ate a shiner I had set on bottom in hopes of a sunrise walleye. Another was an unimpressive largemouth bass that fell for a shiner suspended under a slip bobber. 

Most discouraging though, were the high number of chain pickerel that I landed on both lures and live bait. Pickerel are a native species that I respect, yet have never seen in these numbers in this body of water. It wasn't just me either. I talked to a few other anglers and a tackle shop owner that reported similar results—the most pickerel any of them had ever experienced. I don't know what to make of the population explosion, but I hope the trend doesn't continue in 2023. God willing I will be there perched on a rock next fall to find out. 

Tight lines and happy New Year!

Homecoming

Ever been so consumed by a tradition that you couldn’t imagine going without it? For me that comes in the form of an unmissable camping trip each spring. Most of my life, the third Saturday of April has marked the start of Connecticut’s trout season. Our small group, made up of family and a few like family, have established a four-day holiday around what we call Opening Day, and have been observing it religiously for decades. Even after the official season opener was moved up by a week in 2015, we have stayed true to the traditional weekend. Whether acknowledging it or not, all along the annual trip has been more of a reunion and celebration than it ever was about fishing.

I used to joke that it would take the birth of a child to keep me from Opening Day Weekend. In reality it was a global pandemic that put a temporary pause on our longstanding rituals. A missed camping trip is a grain of salt compared to what many others lost to COVID, yet that didn’t change the fact that it felt damn good to be back together for the first time in two years. It felt like a homecoming.

When you participate in an annual excursion long enough, you are bound to encounter all types of weather, especially in New England. This year was one of those years that our gear and grit were tested right out of the gate. Conditions were cold with downpours—far from ideal for setting camp. Accepting the challenge, we took pride in making camp as comfortable as possible. Pop-up shelters and a borrowed propane heater were the real MVPs of the weekend.

As tends to happen with this crew, food and drink took center stage throughout our stay. The usual staples were there but new to the mix, and highlight by far, was slow-roasting a large piece of beef over the fire. It was my good friend Aaron’s brainchild. He’d done his homework (a.k.a. watching BBQ Pit Boys videos) and with help from my Uncle Derrick, they fashioned a spit with an old motor to rotate a six-pound-plus ribeye roast over hardwood coals for hours. The meat, cooked to perfection, blew our doors off and a new tradition within a tradition was born.

While not practiced as much as it once was, fishing is the common thread that originally tied this crew together. And, by the last full day in camp, a few fish were actually caught. My cousin Max landed the lone holdover—a handsome male brown fooled by a classic Woolly Bugger. I have DEEP fisheries staff to thank for a fresh batch of Survivor strain brown trout that were just stocked the day prior. A handful of the football-shaped thoroughbreds fell to a jig streamer from our pals at Farmington Flies. Though not too bright when I caught them, over time these ‘survivors’ smarten up and start looking and acting like the wild and holdover trout they are the progeny of.

When Sunday rolls around, it’s time to break camp as the reality of things on hold back home inch closer from the periphery. Throwing one last log on the fire helps stave off the feeling, as does downing a final hotdog before hitting the road. Like it or not, it’s back to work on Monday and, God willing, another 361 days until the next homecoming on that cherished patch of land. 

Soak it in, boys.