A Fisherman’s Luck

Knowing a backshore beach’s structures — the deeps, shallows, and river-like troughs between the shore and the first sandbar — is as important to catching fish as knowing the tides, the wind, and the kind and quantity of bait to use. In my mind as I set out from Newcomb Hollow Beach on my annual low-tide pilgrimage to study its cuts and basins was the idea that this was strictly a data-gathering expedition. But I had no intention of breaking Cape Cod’s holiest of beach-fishing canons: travel without a fishing...