A Fly in the Surf, Bill Massey of NJ

Sent in by Fin, thanks!
I believe Bill is a member of Spring Lake Club....

Posted courtesy of Bill Massey and APP.com.

http://www.app.com/article/20130712/...nclick_check=1
A fly in the surf

The challenge of casting a fly into the waves keeps Bill Massey at the water's edge


Jul. 11, 2013
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Bill Massey's fly rod bends as he makes a cast into the surf from a jetty. / John Oswald/Staff Photos


http://cmsimg.app.com/apps/pbcsi.dll...axH=34&maxW=34 Written by

John Oswald

@oswaldapp

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Bill Massey, Allenwood, casts a fly into the early morning surf. / John Oswald/Staff Photo

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Massey with the 22-inch bass he caught and released this past Monday.







Bill Massey was becoming something of a phantom.
In the course of my weekly calls to local bait and tackle shops on what’s happening on the fishing scene, Bob Matthews at Fisherman’s Den in Belmar almost always ended his report with news that Bill Massey had struck again. He got three stripers on Tuesday or a 32-incher this morning, all on his fly rod.
This had been going on for years.
Who was this guy, who routinely caught striped bass when no else was getting a touch, and doing it on a flyrod to boot?
He was never in the Den when I was there. Maybe he was all just a fiction, an imaginary character like Kilroy, and these guys were pulling my leg. There was never a “you just missed him,” but I was beginning to wonder. I asked Bob if he could arrange a meeting and he said he would get back to me.
The message was to be at a certain beach at 4:30 a.m. on a certain day and tell no one. I made the last part up. There isn’t really anyone who cares where I go.
And there really wasn’t any mystery. Bill Massey of Allenwood in Wall Township is a very genial and likable guy who just prefers to do his fishing early and alone.
With the exception of his first seven years spent in Kearny, Massey has been a life-long resident of the Jersey Shore, spending his youth clamming, crabbing and catching fluke in the Shark River. He got his first fly rod when he was in his teens and he fished a spinning rod like everyone else. It wasn’t until a “trip of a lifetime” to Alaska changed everything.
Massey said after catching a dozen or so 25- to 30-inch rainbow trout each day on his fly rod, it was the end of the spinning rod for him. The deal was sealed when he caught three keeper stripers on his first try in the surf with the fly rod. Since then, his spinning outfit has pretty much stayed in the closet.
“It’s just more of a challenge,” said Massey of saltwater fly rodding. He began more than 20 years ago and was one of the first in the area to try it. “There were a couple of other guys around doing it, but not many,” he said. After the movie, “A River Runs Through It,” came out in the early 90s, a lot more people came into the sport, but that initial enthusiasm has died off.

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A retired land surveyor, Massey said his range used to be from Sandy Hook to Barnegat Inlet but it’s now confined to the area between the Shark River and Manasquan inlets. “Maybe I’m just getting lazy,” he said.
Hardly, as Massey said he fishes almost every day. Since the beginning of April, he’s missed maybe one or two days. “I look forward to January, when I can take a break,” he said. He gets to the beach early, by 4:30 a.m. and is gone once the sun gets too high, about an hour and a half later. “I’m like a vampire that way,” he added. Asked if fishing every day ever became boring or routine, Massey just said, “It never gets old.”
While stripers are his favorite target, Massey has also caught weakfish, fluke, blues and false albacore fly fishing. He told me one story of leaving his office in South Belmar early for lunch one day at around 11:30 a.m. and driving over the bridge to see what was happening in the Shark River Inlet.
It was boiling with false albacore and Massey had his fly rod. He got back to work at 4:30 p.m. “They didn’t even know I was gone,” he said.
He hasn’t abandoned freshwater entirely. He fishes for shad in the Delaware River and steelhead in the Salmon River. But the beach appears to be his favorite place.
And it’s where we met earlier this week, on a beach between the Shark River and Manasquan River inlets well before dawn. Devoid of people, umbrellas, lifeguard whistles and the smell of suntan lotion, the beach is much different at this time of day and one almost forgets you’re at the Jersey Shore.
The sky was barely hinting at light when we arrived and Massey began casting a chartreuse and white clouser next to a jetty. He fishes with a 10-weight East Coast Fisherman rod equipped with a Sage reel. He has about 15 rods to choose from and sticks mainly with a 10 weight.
The reel holds about 150 yards of backing, 100-feet of braided-mono running line, a shooting head of 35 feet, a butt section of leader that is five feet long and a tippet of 20-pound test flourocarbon that is 2- to 3-feet long.

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While it was still too dark to see where the fly was landing, Massey estimated it was going about 70 to 80 feet from the beach. In fly casting, the line provides the weight as opposed to a sinker or lure in more traditional fishing. Massey employed a double haul method in casting, creating elegant loops behind him before sending the fly seaward. I stood to the rear left, marvelling at his expertise.
The sun was high enough now to follow the flight of the fly as it landed softly on the foam left by the small breakers. After the fly lands, Massey tucks the rod under his arm and strips the line into a basket at his waist. The retrieve is moderate to fast. The tide was low but on the way in. Massey said the first of the two bass he caught the previous day struck at 4:45 a.m.
That hour came and went without a bite, but Massey went right on casting. He estimates making a couple of hundred casts per morning. He switched to a black Lefty Deceiver for a few but soon returned to the clouser.
The first fish hit quickly. Massey feels the strike first in his hands as they hold the line, and he moves quickly to set the hook. “The tug is the drug,” Massey would tell me later. As soon as he was set, the fish was gone. Massey’s shoulders slumped briefly, and there was an audible sigh, but he was quickly back to business.
The next bass struck and was hooked to stay. The fly rod bounced in the early light and Massey guided the fish to the beach. It was about 22 inches and standard for this time of year. Massey has landed stripers up to 40 inches on his fly rod and has hundreds of fish in the 30-inch range to his credit. With the exception of one or two a year, all are released.
It was such a good time watching Massey in action, I returned the following morning and was treated to a spectacular sunrise and a tutorial on how to fly fish from a jetty. Moving deftly among the slippery rocks, Massey hooked two bass close to the jetty and fought them both for extended periods until they spit the hook. He’d already landed an 18¹⁄_2-inch fluke from the beach, so it was good morning of fishing.
Massey wasn’t too troubled about the two bass that got away. Also a golfer, he said missing a two-foot putt would have been much more annoying. Plus, he was going to be back on the beach the next day.
He was, and he landed another striper.

Great picture!

A perfect example of "loading the rod all the way down the blank".

the question remains: will that jetty still exist next year?

Bill and I were discussing this just the other day and had the same discussion with Dennis from Dmag this morning at breakfast. The general consensus they will be gone by the end of this summer. They start Elboron, Lock Harbor, Asbury and Deal in a few weeks