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.
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| A younger Pat with a nice bass from the rocks. |
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.
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.
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.
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