When I first moved to Brooklyn, I remember being awestruck at the sight of schooling menhaden in the Gowanus Canal. Later that summer, I watched a construction worker on a downtown pier pull in several healthy, sea-lice-ridden stripers during his lunch break. I was even lucky enough to share a park bench with a red-tailed hawk that was gleefully dining on the desiccated remains of a blackfish. I had once assumed that the waters surrounding New York were practically empty, so despite all the noise and pollution, it was deeply satisfying knowing that fish were here and thriving.
I began to dig deeper into urban populations and became fascinated by their history. Long before Henry Hudson sailed up his namesake river, the East Coast boasted an abundance of marine life almost unimaginable by today’s standards. Stories abound of whales washing up along the westside highway, 10-foot-long sturgeon being caught in seine nets, and schools of bait so thick that you could walk across their backs. I spent hours fantasizing about what it might have been like to stroll along the wooded shoreline of Manhattan with a rod in my hand. What would we catch, say, if we hiked south from the present-day Bronx to Battery Park, stopping along the way to wet a line in the fall of 1600?
We start our journey at the far shore of the Harlem River tidal strait, looking toward what would eventually become Inwood Hill Park beneath the Henry Hudson Bridge. It’s an early morning in mid-September and the sun is just beginning to break through the trees. Standing beneath the sheer marble and gneiss cliffs that loom behind, you marvel at the severity of the landscape that unfurls before you. To your left, the river snakes its way through a tight oxbow loop of salt marsh fields and islands dotted with vegetation, its course interrupted by hard-bottomed stretches of crushed oysters. Resembling something in Maine or the North Shore of Massachusetts, this scene is very different from the urban river that we have come to know.
Today, the Harlem is a dredged-out shipping canal, flanked on either side by train tracks and apartment complexes. In 1600, the Harlem was shallower as it flowed north, cutting through the modern-day neighborhood of Marble Hill, where it was fed by a freshwater stream before descending around the bend toward the strait.
On this day, the early morning cool has wreathed the turbid water in fog, and despite the decreased visibility, you can hear the current as it meets the placid Hudson to your right. Scrambling lower through the oak- and cedar-lined hills, you note another sound. Birds. Lining the hunks of rock at the base of the opposing cliffs are dozens of cormorants and terns preening themselves and glancing lackadaisically toward the water. Among them, plovers skitter nervously along the exposed mud, avoiding abuse from the larger ring-billed gulls and egrets.
Meeting the shoreline, you spot what has attracted all the activity: Silversides, thousands of them, choking the surface of the river. Luckily, your surf bag is well equipped, and you eagerly tie on a half-ounce jighead with a soft-plastic swimmer to your 8-foot setup. While waiting for your first cast to sink into the strike zone, your excitement soars as something large harasses a school to your right. Suddenly, the line snaps tight and the rod bends dramatically as whatever you’ve hooked heads toward the Hudson. After a solid fight, you haul the fish onto the bank and, to your surprise, you see that it’s not a striper or blue, but a weakfish, 30 inches in length with a sizable belly. Tiderunners like this, and even bigger, would have been a common sight in the waters of New York in 1600, using the ample flow and swift gradient changes of back bays, estuaries, and rivers to ambush prey. Along with fluke and similar predators, they gorged themselves in the shoulder seasons before retreating into the Hudson and East rivers as temperatures changed.
After landing a few more impressive weakfish and one very angry cocktail blue, the bite dies, leaving your arms tingling for the chance at a new species. So, with great anticipation for the day ahead, you wade a shallow gap in the Harlem and cross over into Manhattan.
The first thing you notice while entering the forest on the opposite shore is its size. The canopy is dominated by old-growth oaks and maples, as well as a species you don’t immediately recognize; the American chestnut, a large, leafy, fruit-bearing tree that once proliferated across the pre-colonial northeast. These forests were known to produce specimens that grew well over a hundred feet tall; however, beneath the vaulted cathedral of limbs, the forest floor itself is open and unmarred by bramble or shrubbery. The Lenape, the Indigenous peoples of Manhattan, were master landscape manipulators, using prescribed burns to create favorable hunting conditions for a variety of species such as whitetail deer and, at one time, elk. As a result, large swaths of the island had no underbrush, making walking fairly comfortable, and it’s not long until you find yourself on a well-worn path headed south. Along the way, you also note the elevation change. The Manhattan of today is fairly even keeled because the island was leveled during its expansion to ensure efficient placement of buildings, public transportation, and streets. In 1600, however, the interior of Manhattan boasted a variety of terrain, from low swamps and rolling grasslands to wooded valleys and soaring domes of bald rock.
After a decent hike, you arrive at the second destination of the day, a small river cutting west to east through the center of the island in what would eventually become Central Park. Clambering down into the pebbly flow, you get a better look at the river’s course. To your surprise, the water is cold, and through the building vegetation, you can see it pours into a pond about a hundred feet from where you stopped. Following the river to a beaver clearing along the pond’s edge, you step into the sunlight and notice how familiar this body of water feels. It’s shallow, sandy, and rimmed with cattails, white cedars, and blackberry bushes. In its center, duckweed and water lilies form islands of dull green, shading the croaking frogs from the autumn sun’s mild heat.
As you ponder your next move, a shimmer in the water catches your eye. A group of pumpkinseed pass lazily by your feet, gently pecking the surface for whatever the trees above may have dropped. Suddenly, the 4-weight fly rod you brought feels like a perfect choice and, for fun, you tie on a dry fly. Your first cast is careful, barely reaching an open patch of pond just beyond the weedline. Touching down softly, the fly dances on the surface for a moment before an angry green snout flares up from the shadows. As you set the hook, you feel a familiar stubbornness that could only be a pickerel, but as you bring it to shore, you notice a distinct rusty coloring. It’s a redfin pickerel, the slighter cousin of our friend and nemesis, the chain pickerel.
Releasing the redfin back into the weeds, you aim your next cast toward the shaded, bubbling water of the river as it enters the pond. After a few attempts, you get the drift to look natural, and on the following cast, a large, blunted mouth engulfs the fly as it slides over the hump of a submerged boulder. Setting the hook on this fish, you aren’t met with the same bored weight of the pickerel; instead, it’s an athletic, head-shaking vigor. Perplexed as to what it could be, the mystery fish jumps, and you see it’s a sizable brook trout. Catching a species like this in the same spot where there might be a hotdog stand one day is certainly odd, but given your surroundings, it seems perfectly natural.
Of the 66 miles of waterways spreading across pre-colonial Manhattan, 22 miles vanished completely in the summer and fall, forcing brook trout to seek shelter in larger, deeper ponds fed by cold-water streams. Here, they foraged on the same things they do today: ambushing insects caught in the current, chasing small baitfish, and enjoying the occasional leech or worm. Brook trout would eventually lose much of their habitat to farming and runoff as the island became increasingly agrarian. This hardship was no doubt felt by the English colonists of the time, who regularly fished for them (and even salters) in the old Collect Pond near modern-day Chinatown.
Placing the brookie back in the water, you take one last moment to admire its stunning red, yellow, and blue spots. With a defiant tail kick, it wets your shirt and swiftly returns to the riffle you snatched it from.
As the afternoon melts away, you reluctantly pry yourself from the pond and continue down the island, this time heading southwest along the Hudson through today’s West Village and Tribeca. For hundreds of years, much of the southern shoreline of Manhattan recessed, only reaching its modern borders in the 18th and 19th centuries, when landfill was used to build highways, parks, and piers on top of vital marine habitat. Yet, on this early evening in 1600, you stride unencumbered along the beach, a calm northerly breeze at your back while the sun throws its fading light into the dunes. You can’t help but think that such a vista belongs more to Truro or Sandy Hook, and it’s difficult to fathom that such beauty will eventually be buried beneath slabs of steel and concrete.
Your attention is snapped back toward the water, as the unmistakable sound of a blitz rips through the air. Now at your destination, a half-submerged boulder field at Manhattan’s southernmost tip, the full magnitude of New York Harbor is revealed. The confluence of the Hudson and the East rivers has formed a surging tidal rip extending into the bay, and trapped within the turbulence is an unfathomably large school of menhaden. Flocks of terns, cormorants, and gulls blot out the sky as they bombard the feast below, while scores of striped bass and blues tear through the acres of bait in an ecstatic frenzy. Most remarkable of all, barely visible through the metallic sheen of sunlight across the surface of the harbor, the back of a whale darkens the horizon, joined by two more that seem to salute you with their jetted exhales.
The scene is not only visually intense but borderline deafening, and you quickly rig up your 10’6” surf rod to get in on the action. A topwater presentation feels the most natural, so you clip on a 2-ounce white pencil popper and fire off a cast. It doesn’t take more than a few cranks of the handle before a pack of fish descends on the lure, and explosion after explosion sends the pencil airborne. After several misses, you connect, and the rod doubles over as the fish digs for the bottom. It’s a gorilla bluefish, and judging from the size of its head as you wrestle it from the white water, you decide it must be north of 15 pounds. Your next cast is met with similar chaos, this time hooking a ferocious striper that tumbles and thrashes on the surface before starting its run. Beaching this fish, a quick weight from your scale reads just shy of 28 pounds.
This feverish topwater action goes long into dusk, only dying out once the blue light of evening fades to night. At final count, you caught 18 fish, a mix of bass and blues ranging from 30 inches to 30 pounds. You can’t remember encountering such an aggressive bite and you want nothing more than to collapse somewhere comfortable and call it a day. Yet, with a new-moon night deepening, you have one more trick up your sleeve. The boulder field will soon flood on the incoming tide and, luckily for you, there are no shortage of eels in the river as you watch them crawl between the rocks at your feet. Coaxing a few into a small trap, you rig one onto a bare hook and wade out toward a submerged ledge. After what feels like ages of casting into the dark, your line gets a playful tap and you fix your feet into the rocks before violently setting the hook. Nothing. Confused, you replace the eel and cast back toward the same spot near the drop-off. Just as the eel hits the water, your line goes taut again, so you bow the rod tip once more and lean into an enthusiastic hookset. Much to your surprise, the fish doesn’t move, and for a split second, you convince yourself you’ve set into a rock, but as you start your retrieve, the drag screams. Fumbling to get a good grip on the reel, you can tell by the even, laboring tail sweeps that this fish is in a different class, and despite all of your weight against the rod, you can’t seem to move it. Minutes go by and the fish still pulls, so in a moment of bravery, you lock the drag, wincing as the braid hums and puckers against the guides. Luckily, it slows, giving you a short window to start threading the giant through the oyster-crusted boulders. Then, in the red glow of your headlamp, you finally see it.
At this size, bass graduate from an animal into a creature of myth, something capable of human speech or wish-granting under the right conditions. Laying the beast on its side, it stares up at you with a single, quarter-sized eye, pale yellow and unwavering while you pluck the hook from its lip. Weighing a fish like this would somehow defeat the magic; instead, you hold it in the water, cradling it like a mourner sending a body down the Ganges. At the end of an already surreal day, this giant serves as the appropriate capstone to an unrivaled adventure.
Questions race across your mind: Will I ever see a bass like this in my lifetime? Is this solely a relic of the past? What changes need to be made to bring back fish like this?
You turn the striper’s head, gripping the trunk-like base of its tail and rhythmically pumping it back and forth until the jet-black dorsal fins stand at attention. Exhausted yet strong, its body tenses, sliding out of your grip and disappearing back into the river.
Modern-day New York is by no means devoid of wildlife. Drastic efforts have been undertaken to restore its harbors, rivers, and forests to their former biodiversity. Still, it’s difficult to look across at Manhattan from the Brooklyn Promenade and not pine for what once was. While it may be impossible to stroll through Harlem grasslands or pick wild blueberries in Union Square, one can still find striped bass, bluefish, weakfish, flounder, and even false albacore in the waters surrounding the city. It’s important to remember that even the most unlikely places have a deep history associated with these various populations and, perhaps one day, we will experience the renewed abundance we fantasize about.
