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Somehow I knew that the full-moon night of July 16, 1981, was going to be special when I left my berth at Lake Montauk, New York, at the eastern extremity of Long Island. My only company on the 24-foot inboard-outboard was 13-year-old Eddie Turpek, who was on his first nighttime bass trip. We left at 9:30 p.m. My friend John Alberda and I had gotten word that a few big stripers had been trolled up the night before, and we felt sure that we could pick up a few fish by drifting live eels. John was fishing from his own boat, so we could cover all the likely areas and call each other on the radio if either of us hit fish.
The southwest breeze died after dark, and we were able to work our drifts perfectly at the end of the flood tide, but there was no action. However, I was marking bass on my recording depthfinder, and I was sure that they would turn on and feed sometime during the night.
It was a great night on the water. The sky was clear, and the full moon made it seem as bright as day until the eclipse started after midnight. The bass were still turned off at the beginning of the ebb. The waiting was too much for young Eddie, and he racked out in the small cabin.
Time after time I worked several spots I had fished for years. Then I tried several narrow ledges near the Great Eastern Buoy. Because bass have been getting scarcer, it has become ever more important to focus on tiny productive areas. Most of these ledges are in deeper water than we used to fish for bass. The drift usually starts over a 40-foot ledge that quickly slopes down to about a 50-foot depth. The big bass seem to hang in very specific slots where they can feed on baitfish coming over the ledge and still stay out of the full force of the moving tide.
When we first started this fishing, it was necessary to use visual ranges on buoys and objects ashore to locate a good area. Then we’d scout around the drop-off with the graph depth recorder and throw out a buoy if we marked fish on the paper. Today the miracle of Loran C has made it all a lot simpler. With the new pinpoint navigation gear, I can go back to an exact spot time after time, after which the graph recorder helps to pinpoint the proper drift for that particular stage of the tide and the wind velocity.
My tackle is simple. I use an Ambassadeur 8600 conventional reel. All the local bass experts favor reels of this type because the push-button release makes it easy to keep the terminal rig just above the bottom as the depth changes. All that’s required to put the reel back into gear is a flip of the reel handle. My rod is a custom-built job on an Ugly Stik blank. The reel had just been filled with some new 40-pound-test Ande blue mono that a friend had given me. My terminal rig consisted of a three-way swivel with a sinker (the size varies with the tide) attached on a short piece of mono, and a long leader to a 6/0 No. 92554 Mustad hollow-point hook. I’ve found that style to be ideal for this fishing. At one time I used stainless steel hooks, but I felt guilty because stainless steel hooks don’t rust out of bass that break off.
The eclipse was still going on at about 3:30 a.m. when my live eel got tapped. Usually big bass tap the eel first, and then it’s necessary to free-spool and drop back instantly so the bass can really grab the eel. I free-spooled and dropped back all right, but just as I got ready to set the hook, the bass bolted with the eel. The result was a massive backlash and a burnt thumb!
I was in big trouble, though I suspected that the fish was only a 30-pounder. The bass pulled out about 130 feet of line, right down to the knotty backlash. I couldn’t give any more line, so I walked forward from stern to bow using the bend in the rod to absorb the surges against the snarled mono. After a while I backed up and retrieved a few yards. By retrieving line this way several times I was able to get the fish within 20 feet of the boat. Then she (all trophy stripers are females) ran all the line out again, right down to the knots.
Once again I was able to stop her at the snarl and used the same procedure to get back some line. I realized now that I was dealing with a bass of respectable size, perhaps in the forties. Soon the fish was near the surface and swimming around the boat. Just as I was looking for my gaff she dived to the bottom with a great surge of power that brought me back to the backlash again. By that time I had the drag screwed down hard, but I couldn’t do anything with the fish. Perhaps, just perhaps, I thought, I’ve hooked a big fifty!
I kept turning the handle of the Ambassadeur, taking in an inch whenever it was available. I’d been fighting the fish for 10 minutes and was worried that the new rod (I’d previously used a somewhat stiffer blank) was too light. However, I worked the bass up again, and I had my four-foot aluminum-handled gaff in hand when the big cow bore down and stripped me right back to the knots again! Now I knew the fish had to be my first sixty. The only other possibility was that I had foul-hooked a medium-size bass in the body or tail. Never before had I experienced four such powerful runs against a stiff drag.
I applied maximum pressure again, and the fish rose on her own. She came up about 100 feet from the boat. I got my first real look at her finning in the moonlight. I reeled carefully, and she came in on her side. There was such a huge expanse of white showing that she didn’t even look like a bass! This was the chance I’d been working for, but when I hit her with the gaff, both rubber grips slipped off the handle and the gaff fell in the water!
The gaff’s hook was still in the fish. I grabbed the handle of the floating gaff, dropped my rod, and used both hands and my back to lift the fish into the boat. I’m six feet tall, weigh about 205 pounds, and pride myself on keeping in good condition, but it took everything I had to swing that fish aboard. As she came over the side I was knocked backward. After 15 minutes of playing her and about 600 yards of drifting, the fish was mine. She made one slap with her tail—a real boom—and she was through. I couldn’t even fit her in my 44-inch cooler. I finally realized that I had the sixty I’d yearned for!
Eddie Turpek was awake now and completely shocked by the size of the first live striper he’d ever seen. I called John Alberda on my CB radio and told him about the huge fish, but John urged me to go on fishing and catch another while they were still hitting. That’s exactly what I did, and on the next drift over the same spot Eddie’s first bass ever hit a 35-pounder. We missed a couple of others before going in at daylight for breakfast.
I was so nervous by that time that I was actually afraid to find out what the fish weighed. At Inlet Marina I showed my bass to veteran night striper charter skipper Frank Braddick, and he could only shake his head. Another night charter captain, Jack Passie, and John Alberda lifted the bass out of my boat with a boom used to unload commercial catches. At that point I had set my heart on 68 pounds, but I was afraid that I was too optimistic. The fish was weighed, and everyone on the dock shouted seventy-five pounds!
The next move was to take the fish to Montauk Marine Basin for weighing on a certified scale. Though I now have a wonderful job running a police patrol boat, I served my apprenticeship as a law-enforcement officer in the toughest areas of my county, and I was involved in many dangerous situations. But nothing shook me up more than the weighing of that bass. What if the Inlet Marina scales were off? Well, they were off, but in the right direction. The bass actually weighed 76 pounds. At 53 inches, the cow was relatively short for such great weight, but the 35½-inch girth made up for that.
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The Aftermath
That’s the story of Bob Rocchetta’s fantastic catch in his own words as he told it to me shortly after he brought in the bass that will almost surely be the new all-tackle world-record striped bass. Though the International Game Fish Association hadn’t approved Bob Rocchetta’s record at the time this article went to press (August 1981), it is hard to imagine a refusal.
All of the tackle used in live-eel fishing complies with IGFA regulations, and there are plenty of witnesses to the legitimacy of the catch. Obviously, in this case, identification of the species is not in doubt. Most legitimate catches on sporting tackle are accepted by IGFA if the fish is fought by a single angler. If you’re interested in the rules and procedures, write to IGFA, 3000 East Las Olas Boulevard, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316.
In 1913 an angler named C. B. Church trolled a 73-pound striped bass up from the hallowed bassing grounds in Vineyard Sound, Massachusetts, to establish an all-tackle record that has been recognized by striper fishermen ever since. To be sure, the IGFA withdrew recognition of Church’s catch in recent years during one of its periodic reviews of records. The reason was that Church’s claim had never been properly documented in accordance with current IGFA procedures. Nevertheless, that’s the record that every striper angler had been shooting at. Until July 17, they all failed.
Actually, there have been a few close calls over the years. The 73-pound record was tied during the 60s by Charlie Cinto while fishing on Capt. Frank Sabatowski’s charterboat off Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts. However, the IGFA didn’t recognize that fish because it was caught on wire line and hit a big plug bristling with treble hooks. Then, on October 10, 1969, Edward J. Kirker boated a 72-pounder on an eel at Cuttyhunk, a catch that received official IGFA recognition as the all-tackle and 50-pound-test class world records.
Considering that striped bass in the 60-pound class are caught every year, it’s hard to believe that the popularly accepted 73-pound record endured so long. In addition to the saltwater fisheries on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, stripers are now thriving in fresh water, and there is a real possibility that a landlocked striper may one day top all the records. As it is, the National Fresh Water Hall of Fame currently recognizes a 59-pound 12-ounce bass taken from the Colorado River in Arizona as the landlocked record.
Breaking a record set in 1913 is a remarkable feat, but that’s no reason to think that it can’t be broken again. Very big fish seem to run in cycles and are often particularly abundant as the species declines. No one caught a bluefin tuna weighing 1,000 pounds until 1970. Now quite a few well over that mark are caught every year, though the species is in big trouble. Certainly the Atlantic coastal run of striped bass is in bad shape, but trophy fish seem more abundant than ever—possibly because of lessened competition for food. There are records of stripers that weighed up to 125 pounds caught by commercial fishermen.
To striper enthusiasts, it’s a pleasure to know that the new record fish was caught by an experienced, very skilled fisherman and not by someone who relied on a charterboat captain and mate to do most of the thinking and work. Bob Rocchetta, now 32 years old, caught his first striper in the Narrows area of Conscience Bay, Long Island, when he was 13 years old. Bob had to learn the ropes from old-timers and many magazine articles and books. After graduating from college, he went to work for the Suffolk County police department, and he bought a four-wheel-drive vehicle so that he could surf cast at Montauk. He had to learn that art from scratch but did quite well with bass and bluefish by casting live eels. However, watching boats working areas well beyond his reach, Bob decided that he’d never be satisfied without a boat of his own.
Just as he was getting into a financial position to buy a decent boat, Bob got married, and instead of a boat he had to invest in a home. Nevertheless, he found an old garvey and rebuilt it and an old engine for a total investment of about $250.
To become a better fisherman Bob knew that he needed a bigger boat. He was eyeing one at a local boat dealer’s but couldn’t justify spending the family’s money on it. Then the engine in the old garvey seized up, and it looked as if he’d be beached for quite a while. Returning home dejected, Bob was met by his wife who told him that she’d just made a down payment on the boat with money she’d saved from her own salary.
The boat was soon in the water, and the fisherman was free to expand his horizons until he finally hit the giant cow bass off Great Eastern Rock during an eclipse of the moon.
This story was originally published in the November 1981 issue of Outdoor Life.