THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 12, 1995 TAG: 9502090199
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 15 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Tight Lines
SOURCE: Ford Reid
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
In the dead of winter, I sometimes like to go to the beach to have a look. For one thing, it is about the only time anymore that you can have Cape Point all to yourself.
The winter sea is a beautiful, dynamic and fascinating thing. I especially like it when an offshore blow brings huge waves to the shore where they are met by a stiff westerly wind.
The waves break eight, ten, twelve feet high, are caught by the opposing wind and blown white and wet against the deep blue sky.
It is a beautiful, awe-inspiring thing to see.
But, alas, you're not likely to catch any fish there.
If you want fish this time of year, you'll best find them in the pages of a book.
In these dead months, the stack of books grows by my bedside. I keep returning to the same authors. Frank Wolner, Nick Lyons, Lee Wulff, George Reiger and John Hersey, among others.
Not a year goes by that I don't reread at least a chapter of Hersey's ``Blues.''
Hersey, also the author of ``Hiroshima,'' ``A Bell for Adano'' and a dozen others, is not remembered as an outdoors writer. He wrote this book about his hobby, about his favorite way to spend his free time and all of the joy and intrigue of chasing and hooking bluefish comes through on every page.
If this fine book does not put you back in that place, smelling the sea with the wind in your face and feeling a bluefish on the end of your line, then you have never been there.
The others I read not because of the specific kind of fishing that they describe but because they describe any kind of fishing so very, very well.
Nick Lyons, for instance, writes almost exclusively about fishing for freshwater trout, which is something that I rarely do. But he writes about it with such clarity and eloquence that I feel like I have been there and the trip is always gratifying.
Frank Wolner, one of the founding fathers of Saltwater Sportsman magazine is another favorite. He is an expert on all sorts of saltwater fishing and an angler can learn a lot reading him.
Even better, he has a great sense of humor, something quite rare among outdoors writers. He can make me laugh out loud and if that is not a blessing in mid-February, I don't know what is.
Another favorite is George Reiger's occasionally preachy but always entertaining ``Wanderer on My Native Shore,'' a sort of guided tour of the Atlantic Coast.
As with most of these books, I tend to read a few pages of Reiger that I have read often before, then get caught in my thoughts and drift along.
It is not a bad way to spend a winter evening. by CNB