I’ll never forget the smell. We had started our journey through the sand over an hour before the stench hit us. I stopped dead in my tracks. “Do you smell that?!” My buddy was already freeing his lure from his bottom guide as i finished my question. While he fired off his cast, I noticed a shimmer in the wave breaking at my feet. SANDEELS! I yelled over. Not a couple sandeels. Not a couple hundred sandeels. Thousands of 4-7 inch sandeels being pushed onto the beach in the middle of a moonless cloudless night on the atlantic side of truro.
When I received the “we should go hit truro..” text, I knew exactly what he was thinking. A lot of walking. A lot of casting. And a lot of explaining to do when I inevitably don’t get home till 8 a.m. No brainer. I picked him up at 10pm in Dennis, and we were trekking through the dunes onto the sand by 1130. Perfect timing to fish the 2 hours before and 2 hours after the 3 a.m high tide.
It didn’t take long after the lures hit the water to hook up. Im not sure what the exact number of fish caught was. I cant even be certain of what the best fish of the night was. We fished that half a mile stretch of empty beach from around 1 a.m until the sun came up. The smell of fresh sandeels and bass in the air the entire time. No trophies were taken. Just photos. And some amazing memories of a trip to a place abandoned by the surfcasting community.
Pete McManus is an angler and photographer from Cape Cod. You can see more of his work on Instagram – @pete_mcmanus_