Hooked on a feeling: Why striped bass are so fun to fish

This story is from this week's episode of the new CBC podcast Good Question, P.E.I. 

Listen here.

Good Question, P.E.I. is available on the CBC Listen app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here's what this week's CBC P.E.I. podcast question is NOT: Why would anyone sit for hours on the water's edge at a beach on a cool April evening?

That answer is too easy for Wayne Murphy of Kensington, and anyone else who fishes striped bass on P.E.I.

"It's pretty relaxing, quiet even. And you can watch the sunset and then you see the stars and sometimes you'll see a satellite go by or something," he said. 

"And then if you get a bite, of course, it goes from being pretty relaxed to, you know, pretty intense all at once."

What Murphy asked for this week's episode of Good Question, P.E.I., is more about the striped bass itself. Or, as he puts it: "What's the deal with striped bass?"

The broad question piqued the interest of podcast host Nicola MacLeod, not just because angling season opened last week on P.E.I. When she was a kid, she remembered seeing people arrive at the beach at the Cousins Shore while everyone else was leaving. Odd, she thought.

Coincidentally, Murphy may have been one of the people she saw. He's been fishing there for years, and like every good fisherman, he has a story about the one that got away.

It was last year. He was teaching his daughter how to fish. With his line still in the water, Murphy set down his rod for a second while he baited his daughter's hook. 

Of course, that's when his rod got tugged out to sea by what he says must have been at least a 10-pound striped bass.

"I ran into the water but it was gone," he recalled. "I said at the time ... you know, this isn't really all that funny now because it was about 230 bucks to get hooked up again with the new set.

"But I said sometime this coming winter, you know, we'll be having a beer in the pub in Kensington, we'll have a good laugh about it."