Whatcha Catch?

Striped bass was on the menu at the O’Brien house on Fuller Avenue this past weekend. Gene O’Brien headed out off Fisherman’s Beach Sunday morning and was on the high seas for less than an hour before he landed a nice 41-inch striped bass.

“I landed him right off the south side of Egg Rock,” O’Brien said. “He put up a good fight for three or four minutes, and I pulled him in.”

O’Brien, a member of the Swampscott Yacht Club, wasn’t instructed to go get dinner, but that’s what he did, landing a nice fish that can feed over ten people when it’s sliced up and put on the grill.

“No big deal, we’re going to grill it up, put some nice cuts together, maybe add some salad, it’s fish tonight,” O’Brien said.

“Fishing is a lot of fun, this isn’t the largest striper I’ve caught, but this is a nice one, that’s for sure,” O’Brien said.

The bass O’Brien pulled in Sunday weighed just over thirty pounds and fascinated several young people on the pier when O’Brien came in on the yacht club’s launch.

“I’ve got a great lure and line, you put a sea worm on that and it’s a killer, the fish have no chance,” O’Brien said. “The stripers think it’s candy and they go right after it.”

The largest bass O’Brien reeled in was just over 50 inches, but like any good fisherman, he knows a fish that size needs to be in the water laying eggs, not on the Hibachi, and he let it go.

“The bass I got today (Sunday) put up a good fight, it took about five hard minutes to get him on the boat,” O’Brien said.