On the Run by David DiBenedetto

Author:David DiBenedetto
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061877353
Publisher: HarperCollins

7

Rhode Island: A Fish’s-Eye View

Maybe it was my coastal upbringing, but counting sheep never quite did it for me. When I was a kid I thought about fish when I couldn’t fall asleep. Often, I imagined myself a spotted sea trout swimming along the edge of spartina grass, gliding over oyster rakes, zooming by the lug-headed redfish, its nose to the mud, and jetting, mouth agape, toward a school of finger mullet. The loop would run until I fell asleep. An offshoot of my insomnia cure was that I frequently dreamed about fish.

I hoped this preparation would help me when I took to the water with Mike Laptew, who calls himself the “diving fisherman.” Laptew left his job as a salesman for a major office-equipment company in 1995 to devote himself to the filming of striped bass. Since immersing himself in his new calling, Laptew has spent more time rubbing fins with stripers than any diver alive. He uses the footage to produce videos that the striper faithful watch with religious zeal. His first production, Striper Magic, released in 1995, was a paean to striped bass and their habitat, with plenty of advice for yanking said fish from said habitat. Its tagline read, “The only place you’ll see more stripers is in your dreams.”

The day I received Striper Magic in the mail, I watched it twice. Laptew has produced two other striper videos, Stripers in Paradise and Secrets of the Striper Pros. One reviewer wrote that Laptew gets “almost as close to striped bass as a sea louse.” To provide this close-up footage of stripers, Laptew, who during the early 1980s was one of the country’s top spearfishermen, goes in the water without scuba equipment. In doing so, he eliminates the noisy parade of bubbles that spook fish.

There was a specific scene in Striper Magic that I had in mind when I called Laptew before my trip. It was a shot taken in the fall off of Rhode Island. In it, Laptew hovers about twenty feet down while in front of him a wall of at least two hundred stripers cruise past, intent on moving south. If you watch it long enough you’ll swear you can see determination in their eyes. I wanted to witness a similar scene right next to him. After a few questions about my diving experience (I had little, save for snorkeling in the Caribbean), Laptew agreed to let me follow him underwater.

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