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High Hill Members have collectively broken the fifty-pound mark 12 times, with 9 of those fish having been taken while the angler was a club member. But before discussion of lesser fish, and those which “might” have been heavier but not officially weighed, it is emphasized that High Hill’s heaviest striped bass is Bob Rance’s 58-13 taken under the Montauk Lighthouse on Sunday 11/15/64. It was taken on a darter with a fresh northwest wind blowing over his left shoulder. Its length was 50 inches and my log shows a girth of 32 and ¾ or 31 and ¾? In those days very few guys fished from the balcony (the wall), and only when the heaves were on. On that particular morning when Bob, Al Rees and I got to the Light the ocean was almost flat and the tide about 2 hours up, high water would come about 6:00am.There were already 5 or 6 guys fishing thus only two rocks, from which you could effectively fish the rip, were left, and since Bob and Al went down ahead of me they got those. Since the water was calm I opted to go to the right side of the Light and fish from a large flat rock which under normal conditions can’t be waded to.
I’d been on that rock without a touch for over an hour when I heard Al loudly calling my name. From my perch I could only make out the shapes of one or two of the group on the left side, but from the was Al was shouting I had to assume that he or Bob had been injured, so I left my rock and scrambled up the balcony.
When I got to where they were I saw Bob sitting at the base of the wall seemingly exhausted or in shock, but an instant later I noticed this huge silvery shape next to him. When I put my neck light on I saw the biggest striped bass that at that point in time, I’d ever seen. The fish’s gills were still moving and the darter was crosswise in its mouth. Of the other guys that were there that night, the only two that I remember were Richie Gerbe and Whitey Pawelski, Richie had been fishing from a rock next to, but a bit further out, from where Bob was fishing and I remember him saying that Bob’s fish had surfaced in front of him and that when it’s tail slapped the surface of the water it sounded like someone had thrown a big board. Richie bought the fish up to the lot on the fender of his jeep and we transferred it to the floor of my VW, which I had accepted delivery of just a few weeks before. I hadn’t started working on the inside yet so it was bare metal and I noted in my fishing log that the fish stretched from the rear of the front passenger seat back to the motor mount partition (engine in the rear).
We drove to Kronuch’s shop knowing that he was going south that day. Luckily he was still there; in fact he was standing at the front door and was close to leaving for Florida. We laid Al’s 26 pounder on the grass and asked John if he would weigh a fish for us. John’s response was that the scale, a very old but large and accurate balance scale, was up on the rafters for the winter and that he wasn’t going to climb up and unpack it to weigh Al’s rat. It was then that we brought out Bob’s cow and when John saw it he became as excited as we were, and as Keating wrote, he unpacked the big scale. Bob had that fish mounted and I seem to recall that it’s stomach was all but empty. Had it’s stomach been full it probably would have gone sixty or more!
From Kronuch’s we went back to the lot and woke Frech up to show him the fish, but he was angry that we’d awakened him and didn’t share in our joy. From there we drove down to North Bar and the reception by the small crowd that gathered was totally different with everyone congratulating Bob. Al Kaich grabbed his camera and one of the pictures, which he took, can still be seen at Kronuch’s Tackle Shop. Bob’s fish was, at that time, the larges that anyone could remember having been taken from the Montauk surf. But it was not just a huge fish caught from the surf anywhere/anytime for it broke the slump that the club had been in. Since 1958 no High Hill member had taken a fish over 29 pounds. Though it is only fair to note that until Bob caught that fish everyone assumed that Rudy Hausler’s 43-6 had the 1964 trophy award sewed up.
Adopted from a book "The Complete History of the High Hill Striper Club " by Fred Schwab ,