A week later I still hadn't caught up to interview Ben. We made plans to talk Sunday at the weekly Derby meetup at the East River Park on North 8th. I woke up to a cold, brutal, and completely unrelenting wind, geared up and and rode my bike to the park. No one from the derby was there, and neither was anyone else. All there was was cold, choppy water, gray sky, and a silent city across the river. I headed a few blocks down to another smaller park where piles of large rocks met the river. The water was faster and deeper here. I promptly lost two lures on three casts. That's when I texted my girlfriend about my miserable fishing skills. I was about to leave after 10 minutes, but then my eyes spied the deadly barbed wire/Kite Eating Tree on the corner of an old concrete dock. I panned slowly to the right, following the chain-link fencing down the line to another corner, where I saw a small hole in the fence. Big enough to slip through, but camouflaged to remain somewhat hidden. It was like someone had peeled the corner back from the post and then let it go, resting against the metal but no longer attached. I slipped behind a Con Ed power plant, noting that technically the "No Trespassing" sign was on their inner fence, and not this one. It lead to a concrete dock about 100 feet long, 20 feet wide and a buffer of weeds, then the back fence of the power plant. Occasionally a security guy would pop his hardhatted head over the fence, but seeing some stupid idiot out on the dock on a day like this, perhaps he relented because he allowed me to stay out there freezing for a few hours.

Out here is where the wind really kicked up. Forty mile an hour gusts feeling like a post-apocalyptic gale. It bordered on cruel. I checked my watch: 3:15. Dead low tide was in an hour and I wanted to fish an hour after that. 5pm seemed a long ways off. Cast after cast with no fish, but the water was even deeper here so at least I wasn't losing any lures, I told myself. This was about as close as I'd gotten to the main channel of the river and I could see about 150 feet out past a rickety looking catwalk that water hurtling itself downriver, and the water below me swirling into weird and violent weather patterns. It seemed like a good spot to fish, given the amount of water moving through here, but nothing was biting. I steeled myself and tried obstinately to defy nature. By either miracle or stupidity I made it to 4:30, when I called it. I rode home into a strong head wind and passed out from shivering for a couple hours. When I woke up there was a text from Ben. "Fishing called off due to wind!" Smarter guy than me.

I went to Robert's shop a few days later to replace the soft-plastic shad baits I kept losing. This is where I met Greg, the owner of the pizzeria who was on Ben's radio show. He was busy smoking cigarettes and getting yelled at by Robert and his mother. "Greg, you have to fix the sign in front of your store! You have no customers!" "I know, I know, I know..." he said, ashing into a plastic cup, as if his parents were chastising him. I recognized Greg's voice from Ben's radio show. He's younger than I imagined, has close cropped hair and was wearing a T-shirt that read "Native Americans: Should've Fought Harder, Pussies." While I don't agree with the message, I do agree with the medium (upon knowing Greg, I don't think he agrees with the message either, but the medium, for sure). Greg is a hardcore fisherman, and though he wasn't part of the derby, he was highly affiliated. He was also one of the first openly generous fishermen I met, giving me productive fishing spots and fish-catching techniques without reservation. I was surprised by his openness and grateful for the tips. Greg is also a fearless fisherman, as I would later learn from Robert, who told me, "Greg is crazy. He says 'You want to go over here? No problem. You want to climb over this fence? No problem.'" He also has some connections that make it a little easier for him to fish. For example he told me about a spot near Carroll Gardens by the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. From the freeway it looks like an empty lot of concrete piers, inside of which no one is allowed.

"You can't get there unless you talk to the security guard or construction workers," he said. "I know one of the security guards for one of the construction companies. You look at it and what happens is the concrete pilings, because you see the way they have it built off the land? Those docks, you're talking 10,000 square feet of manmade concrete piling docks. And what happens is all the baitfish look for structure naturally, this river has no natural structure, except for manmade. That whole strip there if you can get in there where they're doing that construction over there, you can fish off that. You don't even need to cast [to catch fish]. But, it's just getting in there."