David Blinken: Earning his Stripes

So David, when do you think you were introduced to this in a way that made you think, you know, this is going to be a lifetime proposition? I

mean, I was introduced to it, gosh, a long, long time ago.

I mean, when I started fishing out of skiffs, you know, in my 20s down in Florida with somebody I give a lot of credit to my education, Eddie Whiteman.

And, you know, I knew the stripers were in shallow water.

I kind of, at the time I wasn't guiding, I was doing other things.

I was like working in television.

You know, when I was younger, I wanted to be a guide anyway.

And I was like, let's figure out how to bring it here.

And then I fished with this gentleman on the Norwalk Island.

Steve, you got a big one out there.

Yeah.

Jeff Northrup.

And he took me fishing one day.

in his skiff, and he was doing it before anybody.

I mean, he was probably the very first person in the Northeast, or one of the very first people in the Northeast to be fishing out of a skiff for stripers, and he was doing it on the Connecticut coast.

So I kind of became obsessed with fishing stripers shallow.

That's like 40 years ago.

which makes me dating myself so it was well not 40 years ago but probably 35 years ago around i mean as far as like post-mortem

fishing was really great you know

we had there was you weren't allowed to keep any fish then they went to like one fish at 38 and the things were great one fish at 36 and it was still sustainable at that.

And when they went to two fish at 28, I noticed a change within five years that the fishery was changing.

And there were fewer numbers.

You know, I used to come out here and fish to multiple year classes and surprisingly, And it sounds weird, but I wouldn't let people cast to a fish that was like under 25, 28 inches and be like, there's a bigger one that's coming along.

That's how many fish, big fish we had in shallow water.

Now it's like any fish you see you cast at.