Yes, the gals are at it again, pushing their way into another socalled man’s world—that of surf fishing. Of course, there have always been a few hardy ones who refused to be salt-water widows and tagged along with their menfolk, but now they actually have their own clubs.
The Women’s Surf Fishing Club of New Jersey, first organization of its kind in the East, had its inception in February 1952. It was the brain-and-brawn child of Mrs. Joan Fite, of Glenside, Pa., the mother of four and a surf fisherman who can hold her own with the most seasoned male competitors. By April of ’52 this precocious infant club had been accepted for membership in the Association of Surf Anglers’ Clubs (International) and the New Jersey State Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs.
During the first season the club’s team, in competition with teams from 33 men’s clubs, placed fifteenth in the Long Beach Island ( N. J. ) tournament, and won second place among 19 teams (including another distaff outfit) in a contest at Nag’s Head. N. C. By the end of the first season there were 85 active members—and in this rugged sport “active” means just that.
Surf fishing is no game for softies and breakfast-in-bedders—if there are any such creatures left. For instance, the Pennsylvania members of these New Jersey surf-fishing clubs often are on the road to the shore by 3 a.m., some with children, picnic lunches, and all. Of course, many younger children are left at home with that sterling character, the grandmother. However, some of the members are grandmothers themselves, and then what happens?
Many of the fishing tournaments start at dawn ( seems fish are often like the early bird’s worm) and may continue for 6, 8, or even 12 hours, so you can see that this sport calls for stamina as well as skill. While the ladies may look rather shapeless on a raw and windy morn, you should see ’em in the summertime. They could march right down the shore to Atlantic City and qualify in the Beauty Contest. There’s something about this surf fishing that makes for nifty figures and dewy complexions.
The gals really get in there and cast, though. My husband and I learned that when we showed up for the club’s first fishing contest of this year on Memorial Day. Remember how nice and cool it was? We were shivering in spite of our sweaters and the winter underwear I had dug out of mothballs for the occasion.
Surf-fishing contests are like an arranged marriage: you take them for better or worse, fair weather or foul, fish or no fish. This one was held at the north end of Long Beach Island, just below Barnegat Light, and the hours were 7 to 12. Bill and I used the hotel’s breakfast hours as an excuse for our lazy appearance around 8 and found that about 30 gals had shown up before the opening hour, with or without husbands and children.
They were casting expertly into the angry surf, clad in boot-foot waders and layers of sweaters and coats, sporting the club’s attractive green-mermaid insignia on hat and sleeve. Half a dozen boys, aged twelvish, were patrolling the beach and pouncing on every blowfish that was caught. They’d tickle the fish’s tummies to puff them up, then skillfully cut them up for fillets and roe which they sold back to their mothers at a huge profit.
We walked up and down the beach and talked to the various competitors as they reeled in their lines—slowly if they were bottom-fishing, fast if they were squidding. They were strung out pretty well, but I hear that when there is a run of bluefish, kingfish, or striped bass the tom-toms beat and suddenly the beach swarms with fishermen standing elbow to elbow. It’s a good thing their casts are straight back and overhead. I kept a wary eye on the casters, as I didn’t think a lure baited with a bloodworm would do anything for my appearance when it was stuck in my cheek.
Bloodworms for bait are flown daily from New England to the Jersey coast, where they retail for 75^ to $1 a dozen. Any resemblance to nice, innocent angleworms is purely coincidental. They have heads with retractible fangs whose bite produces a sensation similar to that of a sewing-machine needle attached to a jackhammer. Putting one of these repulsive, bleeding buzz saws on a hook requires firm hands and a stern repression of the impulse to scream.
This Memorial Day contest was won by Mrs. Ailison Baldwin, wife of a Philadelphia doctor, with a 4 lb. 4 oz. bluefish she caught on a “doodlebug” baited with mullet.
To show how versatile they can be, the members of this club learn all the technical phases of the sport, including wrapping their own split-bamboo or black glass rods and making their own metal, bucktail, or feather lures. Mrs. Dorothy Holden, the club’s legislative chairman, even crochets thumb guards for protection in braking the line while casting. Mrs. Holden is also a deer hunter, so she brings home her own bucktails. She tells me she soaks a bucktail for 18 hours in a mixture of 1 cup of Soilax to y2 gallon of water, then rinses and dries it for a week or so. When it is really dry, she cuts it into pieces and dyes them, usually yellow.
Yes, the women are really ingenious, particularly when it comes to working out a schedule that meets the demands of husbands, children, and their own desire to fish. Mrs. Kay Townsend of Provincetown, Mass., a housewife and successful fisherwoman, faced a babysitting problem because the striped bass fishing is best at night. She and her husband solved it by building a special body on an old car, with sleeping quarters for the entire family.
Women are conservationists by nature and, as every husband knows, when a woman gets her dander up about a cause she considers worthy, she does something about it. So the gals of this club have joined wholeheartedly with the other surf-fishing clubs of New Jersey in the very controversial issue of having the state declare the striped bass a fish to be taken with hook and line only. Three Eastern states—Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts—already have such laws. The ladies claim that the New Jersey inlets and waterways are the stripers’ native waters, where they come to spawn, and so it is especially important to protect them here from slaughter by netters.
It’s interesting to note that this club has never had to buck the male opposition women have experienced in other branches of angling. Of course, there’s an awful lot of ocean and plenty of room for all in most areas, so maybe that’s the answer. Or maybe the men just plain like to have the gals there, figuring that women and beaches have a natural affinity. After all, the wives might as well be catching fish as lying around catching nothing but sunburn (or pneumonia).
Just to give you an idea how absorbing this surf fishing can be, and also how tolerant the men are, I pass along the following story told to me by one of the club members:
“In September of ’52 the Long Beach Island Fishing Club, to which my husband belongs, held a tournament to pick a team for the big contest of the year. Hank neglected to tell me what was happening that fateful day, so about 3 o’clock in the afternoon I decided to wander over to the club and wet a few worms. The beach was lined with fishermen, and many women and children were lolling around. My sons quickly found playmates and started digging for treasure while Mother baited her hook and hurried to get in on the kill.
“I tossed out my line, and no sooner had it hit the water than strike—a nice-size kingfish. I rebaited the hook and winged (a term my spouse uses to describe my style of casting) it out again. Bang—another king. This happened again and again. In my excitement I forgot the other fishermen.
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“Suddenly a whistle blew and a voice boomed, ‘Tournament over!’ Yes, I had walked smack into the middle of a tournament and caught more fish in an hour than the men caught all day. They tell me that for the last hour of the contest the men just stood and watched ‘that woman’ catch fish.”
Well, that’s surf fishing for you. The women have established their beachhead and are there to stay. As one of the grandmother members of this wind-and-wave club said to me that cold, raw, May morning, “My friends think I’m crazy in the head to be out here today, but this fishing gets into your blood.”
This story was originally published in the August 1953 issue of Outdoor Life.
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