July 26, 2014 — Every fisherman here has a line drawn in the mud, a line he won’t cross.
Some eat their catch from Jamaica Bay but turn their noses up at shad from the Hudson, due to the GE plants that left polluting PCBs in the banks further up. Others enjoy the piers at Red Hook but consider that stream of water polluted when it becomes the East River, due to the effluence from Manhattan. With the water no longer shiny with oil, or filled with needles and condoms, more fishermen have joined the conversation.
“Expensive hobby, or free food, depending on how you look at it,” said Tim Stys, a 35-year-old art director from Brooklyn who catches striped bass along with the Albanians at Brooklyn Bridge Park. He took up fishing two years ago, when he heard the water was now clean enough to eat from.
I met Stys while making the casting rounds with Matthew Paulson, a 38-year-old working artist who came from Wisconsin six years ago and credits fishing with keeping him sane here. Combining his passions, he makes beautiful and very functional lures highly sought out by others in the know. His plugs, lathed by hand in Cape Cod, come hollow so he can adjust the weight himself — from 3/4 of an ounce up to 31/2 ounces, with conditions where you’re casting determining which weight to use — before he paints them with gorgeous brushwork.