Yes, the girls are at it again, making their way into another so-called man’s world – that of surf fishing. Of course, there have always been some courageous people who refused to be saltwater widows and tag along with their men, but now they actually have their own clubs.
The Women’s Surf Fishing Club of New Jersey, the first organization of its kind in the East, was founded in February 1952. It was the brainy and talented offspring of Mrs. Joan Fite of Glenside, PA, a mother of four and a surf fisherman, who could hold her own with the most experienced male competitors. By April of ’52 this precocious infant club was 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 team, competing against teams from 33 men’s clubs, finished fifteenth at the Long Beach Island (NJ) Tournament, and placed second among 19 teams (including another distaff organization) at a competition in Nag’s Head. By the end of the first season NC had 85 active members – and “active” means just that in this tough game.
Surf fishing is no game for softies and snackers – if there are any such creatures left. For example, the Pennsylvania members of these New Jersey surf-fishing clubs are often on the road by 3 a.m., some with children, picnic lunches, etc. Of course, many young children remain at home with that role model, the grandmother. However, some members are grandmothers themselves, and what happens then?
Many fishing tournaments start at dawn (it seems the fish are often like early bird bugs) and can continue for 6, 8 or even 12 hours, so you can see that the sport requires stamina as well as skill. Although the women may look disheveled on raw and windy mornings, you should see them on hot summer days. They could march straight down the coast to Atlantic City and qualify for the beauty pageant. There is something about this surf fishing that produces great figures and dewy looks.
However, the girls really get in there and act. My husband and I learned this when we attended the club’s first fishing tournament of the year on Memorial Day. Remember how good and wonderful it was? We were shivering despite our sweaters and winter underwear that I had dug out of mothballs for the occasion.
Surf-fishing tournaments are like an arranged marriage: You take them for better or worse, weather good or bad, fish or no fish. It was held at the north end of Long Beach Island, just below the Barnegat Light, and the times were from 7 to 12 o’clock. Bill and I used the hotel breakfast time to make our lazy appearance around 8 o’clock and found that before the opening hour about 30 girls had arrived with or without husbands and children.
They were wading expertly into the angry surf, in boot-foot waders and layers of sweaters and coats, wearing the club’s striking green-mermaid insignia on caps and sleeves. Half a dozen boys around the age of twelve were patrolling the beach and pouncing on every fish they caught. They would gut the fish to inflate their bellies, then skillfully cut them up for fillets and roe, which they would sell back to their mothers at huge profits.
We walked up and down the beach and talked to various competitors as they reeled in their lines – slowly if they were bottom fishing, fast if they were bottom fishing. They were very well fished, but I have heard tom-toms go off when there is a run of bluefish, kingfish, or striped bass and suddenly the beach is filled with fishermen standing elbow to elbow. It’s a good thing their casts are straight back and up. I kept a watchful eye on the casters, as I didn’t think a lure laced with bloodworms would do anything for my appearance when it got stuck in my cheek.
Bloodworms for bait are flown daily from New England to the Jersey shore, where they retail for $75^ to $1 per dozen. Any resemblance to the nice, innocent angleworm is entirely coincidental. Their heads have retractable sharp teeth whose bite produces a sensation similar to that of a sewing machine needle attached to a jackhammer. Putting one of these disgusting, blood-sucking buzz saws on the hook requires calloused hands and rigorous suppression of the impulse to scream.
This Memorial Day contest was won by Mrs. Alison Baldwin, wife of a doctor from Philadelphia, with a weight of 4 pounds 4 ounces. The bluefish he caught was a “doodlebug” baited with mullet.
To show how versatile they can be, members of this club learn all the technical steps of the game, including winding their own split-bamboo or black glass rods and making their own metal, bucktail, or feather baits. Mrs. Dorothy Holden, legislative president of the club, also crochets thumb guards to protect against breaking 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 in a mixture of 1 cup Soilex and 2 gallons of water for 18 hours, then rinses and dries it for about a week. When it is really dry, she cuts it into pieces and colors them, usually yellow.
Yes, women really are ingenious, especially when it comes to crafting a schedule that meets the demands of husbands, children, and their own desire to go fishing. Mrs. Kay Townsend of Provincetown, Massachusetts, a housewife and successful fisherman, faced the problem of child care because striped bass fishing is best at night. She and her husband came up with a solution by building a special body on an old car that had sleeping space for the entire family.
Women are protectionists by nature and, as every husband knows, when a woman takes up an issue she deems worthy, she does something about it. So the girls of this club have joined fully with other surf-fishing clubs in New Jersey in the controversial issue that the state has declared the striped bass to be a fish to be taken only with hook and line. Three eastern states—Connecticut, New Hampshire and Massachusetts—already have such laws. The women claim that the New Jersey inlet and waterways are the stripers’ native waters, where they come to spawn, and so it is especially important here to protect them from slaughter by netters.
It is interesting to note that this club never faced the male opposition experienced by women in other branches of fishing. Of course, most areas have plenty of ocean and plenty of room for everyone, so that’s probably the answer. Or maybe men simply like having girls there, feeling there’s a natural connection between women and beaches. After all, the wives won’t be catching anything but sunburn (or pneumonia) while lying around fishing.
Just to give you an idea of how entertaining surf fishing can be, and also how tolerant the men are, let me tell you the following story told to me by one of the club members:
“In September ’52 the Long Beach Island Fishing Club, to which my husband belonged, held a tournament to choose a team for the year’s big competition. Hank neglected to tell me what was going on that fateful day, so about 3 o’clock in the afternoon I decided to hang out at the club and wet some worms. The beach was full of fishermen, and there were many women and children hanging around. My sons soon came to play. He found his companions and started searching for the treasure, while the mother set her hook and hurried to kill.
“I threw my line out, and as soon as it hit the water it struck – a good-sized kingfish. I reeled the hook and cast the feather (a term my spouse uses to describe my style of casting) out again. Bang – another king. This happened again and again. In my excitement I forgot other fishermen.
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“Suddenly a whistle blew and a voice echoed, ‘The tournament is over!’ Yes, I went on a spree in the middle of a tournament and caught more fish in an hour than I caught in an entire day. He told me that for the last hour of the competition the men just stood there watching ‘the lady’ catch the fish.’
Well, that’s surf fishing for you. Women have established their beach and are there to stay. As one of the grandmother members of this wind-and-wave club told me on that cold, raw, May morning, “My friends think I’m crazy for coming out here today, but this fishing gets in your blood.”
This story was originally published in the August 1953 issue of Outdoor Life.
