• CLOCKWISE FROM TOP • Sam Lungren and Paul Nicoletti cradle a striped bass prior to release during the Cheeky Schoolie Tournament. While technically a “competition,” everyone was friendly and shared tips, tricks and water openly. It is fishing after all, and there’s only so much one can do to gain an advantage over others. The rest is a wildcard held by the fish. Team P Rex: Rex Messing (L) and Peter Markano are all smiles and looking quite dapper in their Cheeky Schoolie winners jackets. Rex and Peter’s total of 119½ inches over four striped bass was just enough to claim first place during the 2023 contest. Peter Markano and Sam Lungren clamber along a seawall on Massachusetts’ Cape Cod, making their way to yet another fishy zone during the 2023 Cheeky Schoolie Tournament. slideshows of past excursions, eat good food and go fishing. It didn’t seem competitive —everyone was friendly, forthcoming with information for folks new to carp. People weren’t there just to prove how good a fisher they are, but to connect with old friends and make new ones. Any reservations I had prior to that weekend quickly evaporated in the desert heat. However, the Schmoots Clooper is an individually scored tournament and we fished it together, in your little homemade skiff, and only one of us actually knew how to pole it effectively (not me). So right away I had a bit of an advantage, as I kinda had you as a guide for half the day, poling me around and all. JR : Yeah, that was fun though. I’d always wanted to try poling someone around in my little boat, and I have to say it was almost as fun watching you nail carp from the platform as it was trying to catch them myself. I wonder, though, how did the vibe differ from the tournament on Cape Cod a few months prior? conservation and angler education, championing best practices for catch and release to reduce mortality prior to, during and after the event. Dr. Andy Danylchuk’s team at UMass Amherst is doing some valuable re-search projects, collecting data on striped bass after they’ve been caught, velcroing releasable anenometers to them, which track speed and movement habits after handling. Sascha Danylchuk’s Keep Fish Wet initiative armed participants with a ton of knowledge about principles anglers can control to be nice to the fish. Over $30,000 was raised to help Keep Fish Wet, Stripers Forever and the American Saltwater Guides Association pursue their missions. That’s significant, and all thanks to the Schoolie tournament. CV : Same but different? I was invited to the Cheeky Schoolie Tournament, and I was that guy who’d never caught a striped bass or even fished for them. It was intimidating, mostly due to being in a foreign place surrounded by new people. But I wasn’t com-peting. I chose to observe instead, and shadowed a few teams, one of which went on to win the thing— the team of Rex Messing and Peter Markano. The main thing was the difference in size. The Schoolie Tournament is billed as the largest catch-and-release flyfishing tournament in the country, with more than 500 entrants in 2023. The size seemed counterintuitive at first—encouraging so many people to go fishing for striped bass, which have quite the storied past as a gamefish, but also an uncertain future with struggling stocks and manage-ment indecision. But as the weekend progressed, I realized it’s much more than “first, most, biggest” and packs a ton of worth for the community. The great thing about the Schoolie tournament: While it’s a rad community gathering for anglers passionate about striped bass, just as the Schmoots Clooper is for carp, it’s also highly focused on JR : That’s the great thing about this new generation of “tournaments.” They provide structure for some-thing that is wider-ranging than the bloodbaths of tournaments past. My preference will always be for a solo day on the water, maybe an outing with a friend or two, sans pressure. But I have to admit there is a thrill to adding some constraints and expectations that I think most anglers would enjoy and benefit from. In a tournament, you should be fishing your “best,” and that’s worth something. We don’t scoff at the runner who enters a 5K or marathon, telling them they are doing it wrong; that runner is taking the lessons they’ve learned outside of competition and trying to apply them toward some sort of ideal version of themselves as a runner. The way I see it, a fishing tournament—whether less formal, like the Schmoots Clooper, or slightly more serious, like the Schoolie—can serve the same purpose. CV : Maybe we can benefit from an external push to fish our best. We all want to catch that first fish, the most fish, the biggest fish, but after all it’s just fish-ing. In putting ourselves up against a wild creature there are so many variables. And if we’re going to push to fish better, we have to fish better for the fish too, either by joining a community on Cape Cod, or clooping the schmoots in the desert heat of Coulee City. Tournament or not, in my mind it’s best prac-tice to fish hard and do as Todd Snider sings, “Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.” 082 FIRST, MOST, BIGGEST
The Flyfish Journal The Flyfish Journal 15.4: Page 80
