On the last Friday of September I arrived at the Cape Cod Canal at 5:00 AM.  To my complete surprise, the parking area was nearly full!  My friend Dave Anderson (S-B Handle: “Canal Man”) arrived at 5:05 AM.  While I was suiting up, Dave gave me one of his Surfasylum Pencil Poppers in “yum-yum” yellow.

By 5:30 AM we were perched on our rocks.  As I fumbled to adapt my cast to the sloping bank, Dave was nearly crossing lines with an angler on the other side of the canal.  I eventually managed to correct my cast. :-).

From 5:30 AM to 7:30 AM I fished all the plugs I brought, twice.  Nothing. Not a bump.  Not a tap.  I then clipped on Dave’s Pencil Popper blasted out a cast.  I had the plug jumping in every direction on the compass.  Nothing. I yelled over: “Dave, am I doing this right?”  (This was my first time fishing a pencil popper.) Dave looked over and kindly explained how to make the pencil popper “dance” from side to side.  Three casts latter, BANG!  A fish hit the plug like a freight train!  There was no mistaking that there was a fish on.

The current was more than half it’s full force.  With 400 yards of 50 pound Power Pro spooled on my ZX2-27, I had no fear of getting spooled. But, this fish was pulling line off my reel like the drag was not set.  Dave then yelled over “Pump your rod to gain some line!”.  By now my forearm was now on fire.  After three sets of “pump, drop and reel” with my medium-heavy power 10’6″ St. Croix rod, a beautiful 24 lb stripped bass was at the edge of my Korkers.

After a quick picture via Blackberry, I held the fish by it’s tail and pulled it back and forth in the water, until it was ready to swim back into the wild.