The morning of Sept. 6th, 1971 I lived in West Haven, at West Walk apartments and our apartment looked out over Long Island Sound, it was 50 yards from our front door. It was just getting light, I had the window open and I kept hearing PLOP!! and splashing so I rolled over, looked out and had a heart attack. The Sun hadn't risen yet but it was light and in that early morning light, 50 yards from my window, everywhere I looked there were schools of Big Bluefish slaughtering the Menhaden, or Bunkers. The Bunkers were literally jumping up onto the beach, out of the water to stay away from the Blues shredding their schools. I got dressed in about 2 seconds, ran down the stairs and out the front door and grabbed my fishing rod and a small tackle box of lures. This was before the world went to shit and everyone who fished had their fishing rods hanging from hooks, not locked up at all, on their front porch. I ran to the water, took my first cast and caught the first of maybe 25 fish that day, big Blues, anywhere from 12-18 pounds. As the Sun came up over the horizon, more and more of The Regulars.. the fisherpeople from the complex... came running down to the beach and started flogging the water with Hopkins Lures and Pencil Poppers and with almost every cast they were hooking up. It was ridiculous. By 8 I knew I wasn't going to even think about going to school because there were huge schools of Blues no matter where you looked. They were so thick and man in East Have caught two with a clam rake, just slamming the water where the fish were killing the bunkers And all day long there was absolutely no wind, the water was absolutely glassy calm. I met my friend Wayne Johnson about 9 AM and we fished together until the tide went out about 2 PM and it was absolutely non-stop. When word got out about how many fish there were first dozens and then hundreds of people were frantically casting, lined up between Savin Rock and Chicks and on probably 8 out of 10 casts they were hooking up. There is a 'system' for catching Bluefish, you have to cast to the near side of the school because they run through a bait ball just biting everything, and if you cast to the middle or the far side of a school you'd get your line cut every time. I lost pretty much all of my lures by about 10 AM but by that time so many people had lost lures I was finding one about every 5 minutes or so. There were literally millions of Bunker and Blues in New Haven Harbor that day because no matter where you looked you could see fish tearing it up, terns and seagulls everywhere diving to chow down on the tattered remains of the Bunker that were torn apart by the Blues.

The next day, I looked like I'd been adrift in a life raft at sea for 6 months, I spent 7 hours staring into the Sunlight reflecting off that smooth, slick water. I had blisters on my face and lips, I looked savage but it was worth every leaking blister over the next week.