TIGHT LINES
SIZE ISN'T EVERYTHING
with Andrew Spencer
So it's the 30th anniversary of the release of "Star Wars." That's a pretty serious milestone. For my generation, it was a badge of honor to tell people how many times you'd seen the movie, where you first saw it, that kind of thing. And just for the record, I saw it for the first time at the Dreamland Theater on Nantucket. Unfortunately, I can't remember how many times I've seen it. Mom tells me that short-term memory is the first to go (she actually tells me that pretty often, kind of like she's forgotten that she's already told me), so maybe that explains it.

No matter how you measure it, sometimes you've just got to throw 'em back.

Despite the far-out nature of the whole thing, Star Wars taught us a lot of lessons. Think happy thoughts and good things come to you. Always believe in yourself. Good always trumps bad. Little clichés like that. Sounds like my high school football coach learned his motivational speeches by watching the movie, but I digress. But one other thing it taught us was that bigger, while often stronger, isn't always better.

Let me shift gears for a minute. I'm from Texas, where everything is supposedly bigger. Bigger hair; bigger hats; bigger cars; bigger whatever. And truth be told, it's a pretty big state. You can start out driving east from the city of El Paso, drive a full tenhour day, and you'll still be in the state. That's a pretty serious chunk of real estate. Now back to Star Wars. There's a group of thinkers out there proclaiming bigger is better, but think about the Death Star. It was huge, no question about it. It managed to blow an entire planet off the intergalactic map. That's power, kids. But remember what happens in the end. Luke Skywalker blows the whole thing apart and good is restored to the universe until the sequel. Now hold that thought.

Shift gears again, this time to Nantucket. Big houses; big cars; big boats; the whole shebang. But is bigger really better? We've got eroding beaches, narrow streets and shoals aplenty surrounding our little patch of sand, so does any of this size really help anything? I'm not going to get on my soapbox here and start telling you about how we all need to be driving smaller cars and living in smaller houses, but there's a point here. Long story short, bigger isn't always the be-all and end-all of existence. Just like Coach Reese always used to say: "Son, it ain't the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."

Consider poisonous snakes. They tell me that the smaller the rattlesnake, the more potent the venom. And people aren't immune from this, either. Hello? The Napoleon Complex? Ayup. Smaller can be feistier, meaner, tougher, whatever. Doug Flutie? 'Nuf said. So in other words, size is only one factor in this whole equation. Coach Reese used to tell us that, too.

And there's no better example of this whole "might-isn't-always-right" thing than fishing.

You've got yourself a good start there, kid, and if you water it and take care of it, it might grow into a full-size segue.

Friends and neighbors, we're starting to catch keeper-size striped bass all of a sudden, and it's a bonanza out there. So let's talk about size for a minute. There's a state-mandated minimum length for striped bass, which this year is 28 inches. Shorter than that, and you've got to release the fish. And please spare me the whole "the fish was hooked too badly to release" song and dance. I've heard it before and it rang hollow then, too. There's plenty of fish out there, so throw it back. But what to do with the fifty-or-so-incher that you pull in? I mean, that's a trophy fish, right? Might look pretty good mounted over your office desk, right next to that twelve-point whitetail. But there's a problem with keeping that fish.

Larger striped bass are always females; it's a fact of nature that the female Roccus lineatus is the bigger one. Typically any bass you catch over thirty pounds is a female, and the bigger the fish, the more eggs she can produce. So you keep that mammoth striper, and you've just managed to wipe out literally millions of potential future striped bass. Case in point, a 55-pound female bass can produce over 4 million eggs. So by all means, get out there and fish hard and catch the biggest fish you can find. But think catch and release. Take your camera with you and get a reproduction mount if you want a tangible memory to have at home. Keep the thirty-or-so-inch fish you'd otherwise throw back because it's too small and release the bigger ones so they can carry on the species.

Don't get me wrong here. Big fish are fun to catch. But you want to know a secret? So are little ones, and more often than not, the meat on smaller fish is better than on the big ones. One of the joys of August is catching little bluefish in the channel on lightweight tackle. Yeah, the fish weigh a couple of pounds each and they're not going to win any tournaments, but it's still just as much fun as pulling in hefty striped bass on bigger rods.

So just remember that bigger isn't always better. Think proportions here. When you're out there on the backside of Tuckernuck and you pull in that forty-pound striper, take your photo and put her gently back in the water to live for another day - and to spawn another generation. Of course, when you're pulling in the little ones, put them back in, too, so they can grow up and your kids can catch striped bass, too.

Tight lines. I