Ben, as it turned out, was a man of some renown in the cooking and surfing world. He's famous for his chowders, recipes he learned from his grandfather Frank Sargent who lived in Cape Cod. Ben has cooked chowder for Martha Stewart and Bobby Flay and owned a couple seafood restaurants in Williamsburg. The "Brooklyn Chowder Surfer," as he likes to call himself, has a Web show called "Catch It, Cook It, Eat It," and he travels around the world finding sea-worthy characters and secret recipes for delicious fish and seafood. He's recently expanded that series into a weekly show on Heritage Radio. He's a man of seemingly unlimited energy and of packed schedule, always in the middle of two or three things at a time. I met him a few days later by the new pier at the end of North 5th Street, which is nestled among huge expensive condos and you literally walk under one like a giant tollbooth in order to reach the water. The pier, which was open just a few days earlier for the first official Sunday meetup for the derby, was now mysteriously boarded and locked shut. Ben was wearing the same Katz's Deli hat backwards and same camouflage pants as the opening night party, and was busy talking on his cell phone while filming himself Survivor Man style as he spoke. He greeted me again with an elbow. "This fucking sucks, dude," he said. The NYC Parks department, in their ultimate wisdom, had decided to close the pier for the month, probably the last month of the year that anyone would actually care to be on the water. A paper sign was nailed to the board: "Closed in order to provide you with more waterfront enjoyment." I didn't have much time to interview before I had to head back to work, so again I made tentative plans with Ben for later that week. As I crossed Kent Street I heard a voice talking over the wind. It was Ben riding a crappy ten-speed bike, a huge Lowepro camera bag on his back, two fishing rods strapped to the pack, one hand on the handlebars and the other hand holding the camera filming himself as he rode up the street.

By pure coincidence, the start of the derby coincided with the introduction of mandatory fishing licenses for all recreational saltwater fishermen in New York state. Freshwater and commercial anglers have long been required to buy yearly licenses, but for the salty surf fishermen, this was something new and viewed almost universally with suspicion, with few people I spoke to willing to shell out the $10 annual fee. The new law was the result of a federal policy made after the reauthorization in 2006 of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the primary law that manages marine fisheries, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found its current survey methods inaccurate. The old methods consisted of cold-calling residents of popular fishing towns as well as a "shore based angler intercept survey," which many on Internet fishing boards joked was a Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) agent estimating a catch by counting the number of anglers on a pier or jetty. Now with the new policy requiring improved data collection and accuracy over the marine fisheries, states began issuing mandatory licenses for saltwater anglers before the federal registry takes effect in 2011. The reason is simple: the U.S. government requires a registry of all saltwater fishermen across the country. If states don't issue their own licenses and gather the registry information themselves, the government will issue a federal registration for $15-$35, meaning that money collected from saltwater licenses will go to a federal coffer rather than a state one.

Saltwater anglers have been in a state of semi-chaotic revolt since October 1. Some East End towns on Long Island have collectively filed suit against the DEC citing the Dongan Patent, a pre-Revolutionary War document which grants power over the town's waterways and public lands to locally elected trustees. Originally brokered between Governor Thomas Dongan and the British government, the New York state constitution preserved the patent even though it was part of colonial rule. Brian Foley, a senator from Brookhaven is sponsoring a bill known as S6250 which will repeal the license mandate, and instead participate in a "free federal registry"—which the government hopes will be agreeable to the East End towns. Many anglers flatly refused to purchase a license, citing the state's general ineptitude in managing money. Anglers want the money to go back to fisheries management and improvement and worry the fees will go into a general state fund. Of the 60 or so derby members, few made the effort to get a license, which was clearly not endorsed by the organizers of the derby. "It's now a privilege to go fishing," Ben told the Daily News in October. "They're only doing this to make money on licenses and to make money on ticketing you." Jamie echoed the sentiment, shrugging "It's just another barrier for people who live in a big borough to get out and enjoy fishing."