In folklore, solar eclipses foreshadowed catastrophe. The sudden disappearance of the sun was believed to be the sign of the apocalypse—and if you were a baitfish in the Cape Cod Canal around the time of the Great American Eclipse in late August, the week-long striped bass blitz was tantamount to the end of days.

Mackerel, squid, and adult bunker were corralled in the Canal by schools of 15- to 50-pound stripers. The extreme tides brought on by the new moon gave the bass a big advantage over the baitfish, while a week of stable weather gave the fish no reason to move on. While people throughout the country flocked to the 70-mile-wide band from Oregon to South Carolina where the moon would totally eclipse the sun, fishermen from throughout the Northeast flocked to the 7-mile land cut where, at times, the breaking striped bass eclipsed the surface of the Cape Cod Canal.

Accounts vary on just what day the blitz began, but it’s fair to say that word got out on the Saturday before the eclipse. Around lunchtime, The Fisherman’s View restaurant in Sandwich started a series of live videos on their Facebook page. The most popular one, captioned “View from the Patio,” showed a young angler clad in white deck boots landing a 20-plus-pound striper while several fishermen in the background fought fish.

By Tuesday, fishermen were calling it the best Canal blitz in years. By Thursday, old-timers were split in their opinions about whether this was the best Canal blitz since the 1950s, or the best canal blitz ever.

(Photos by Adam Eldridge, Matt Doucette, Eddy Stahowiak)