Edgar Hooper remembers the handlines, the Penn Squidder 

 reels, the Model-A Fords half-buried in the sand 

 and the stretches of deserted beaches, even in fall. 



"Think about it," he instructs. A 

 round weight such as his allows the bait 

 to roll along the surf bottom, fluttering 

 like a live fish. And a round sinker is 

 easier to snatch off the bottom for a 

 quicker hook-set, critical to soft-biting fish. 



Shook digs through a camouflaged 

 bag overflowing with lead sinkers. In 

 addition to coin and pyramid sinkers, he 

 says, there are storm sinkers, egg 

 sinkers, bank sinkers and bombers, also 

 called satellites, breakaways or Sput- 

 niks. He pulls out a wedge of lead with a 

 concave, broad head. Locals call it a 

 frog's tongue or arrowhead, he says, and 

 it's particularly suited for Hatteras 

 waters. Strong side-currents push the 

 sinker over, driving the blunt head into 

 the sand for a strong hold. 



"But there's a lot of fishermen who 

 don't know about all that stuff," Shook 

 says, his cigarette pinched in a grin. 

 "And they fish right beside you and 

 catch the big one." 



How they do that is a question I 

 want to pose to Preston, but one I fear 

 might be construed as cynical or 

 contemptuous or at the least sopho- 



moric. But then the 

 tournament judge 

 shows up and tells 

 Preston about a few 

 15-inch bluefish 

 caught on "metal," an 

 artificial lure, most 

 likely a Hopkins 

 spoon. Preston shakes 

 his head and looks up 

 the beach. He knows 

 who the judge is 

 talking about. 



"Those Jersey 

 guys," he says, a bit 

 wearily. "Man, they 

 will throw the metal. 

 But dad-gone, I hate 

 to get so tired out so 

 early." 



It gives me an 

 opening to make my 

 pitch: Taking into 

 account the thousands 

 of dollars of gear owned by the team, 

 what does he make of the role of luck in 

 the angler's game? 



He thinks for a moment, eyes fixed 

 on the dime-sized spot of the Atlantic 

 Ocean where his thin line disappears in 

 the surf, and begins to grin. 



"I guess it's like my friend Ted 

 Mosely says," he replies. "You can't 

 worry about the mule going blind, you 

 just keep loading the wagon. All we can 

 do is fish and hope." 



Fishing and hoping have gone hand 

 in hand at Hatteras for decades, and there 

 is history enough of huge fish caught 

 from its beaches to keep the hope at fever 

 pitch. Some years, swarms of 15- and 

 20-pound bluefish blitz the Hatteras 

 beaches, driving thousands of bait fish 

 onto the sand as the great schools cruise 

 the sloughs. Striped bass in excess of 25 

 pounds are once again becoming a more 

 common occurrence, while dreams of 

 another mammoth red drum — like the 

 world record 94-pound 2-ounce beast 

 caught on the Avon beach in 1984 — 

 keep the most obdurate anglers on the 

 beach night after night, all night long. 



That afternoon I leave Rising Tide 

 on the south beach, its members lagging 

 far behind the tournament leaders, to 

 visit Edgar Hooper, a Hatteras Island 

 resident since 1946 and frequent visitor 

 for 30 years before that. A five-time 

 president of the Cape Hatteras Anglers 

 Club, Hooper remembers fishing with a 

 handline in the 1920s, whirling the 

 weighted end of a cotton line around his 

 head like David's sling. "Swing it 

 around and let it ride," he says, sitting in 

 the kitchen of his house, the dining table 

 a jumble of old Penn Squidder and 

 Surfmaster reels. "You got a drum on, 

 well, you throwed the line up over your 

 shoulder and go on with it, just drug 'im 

 out." The first time Hooper saw 

 conventional spinning tackle, he scoffed 

 at the contraption. "I said, what the hell 

 would I want with that? It was just an 

 old coffee grinder as far as I could tell." 



According to Hooper, not until the 

 1940s did locals begin using the 

 newfangled surf-fishing rods and reels 

 already popular along the New Jersey 

 coast and elsewhere. But a decade prior 

 to that, the cape's reputation for surf 

 fishing was sufficiently royal to entice 

 northern anglers to endure a bone- 

 bruising journey to the Point. In his 

 Atlantic Game Fishing, published in 

 1937 with an introduction by Ernest 

 Hemingway, S. Kip Farrington Jr. 

 outlines the trip in the years long before 

 Bonner Bridge spanned Oregon Inlet: 

 "From New York, the ships of the 

 Eastern Steamship Lines sail daily, 

 except Sunday, reach Norfolk at eight 

 o'clock in the morning, connecting with 

 the bus which leaves at eight-thirty .... 

 Your destination, by bus, is the "Whale- 

 bone Filling Station,' in the village of 

 Wancheese [sic], a trip of about two and 

 a half hours. There, it is necessary to 

 have a car meet you from Hatteras, 

 which will come upon receipt of a 

 telegram. After a ten-mile drive, Oregon 

 Inlet is crossed by ferry. Cape Hatteras 

 is fifty-five miles down the beach by car 

 from Oregon Inlet." 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 11 



