If you live in the Northeast, fall fishing is our beautiful obsession. Nothing revs our tribe’s motors like the fall run. No disrespect to spring and summer, but fall is the season to be on the water from Maine to New Jersey, forgoing sleep, calling in sick to work and using up vacation time to chase bluefin and yellowfin tuna, albies, bluefish, blackfish and, of course, striped bass ­— the fish that has come to embody fall as much as any species in the region. Pick your moons and tides, circle the most productive weeks on the calendar, contemplate your favorite ambush spots, and fish until the tank is empty. It only comes once a year.

THE BLITZ

Flip the calendar to early fall, and heavy surf and strong west winds sweep the beach face clean to the dunes, undercutting and exposing the roots of the grasses that hold the entire shebang together. The thick swell booms as it carves a fishy trough at the foot of the berm, which will soon be filled with scores of terrified juvenile menhaden. Think Interstate 95 during a zombie invasion.

Ghostly apparition? No, just a mega-school of peanut pushed toward a New Jersey beach by a school of stripers.

The chaos between breakers and beach is mesmerizing: busting fish, carpets of white water, sheets of fleeing peanut bunker. Anglers get winded running toward the spectacle in waders. Small boats glide perilously close to shore while excited occupants fire off ill-timed casts that go awry.

Take a breath and make the first cast count. Multiple rods bend as folks hook up. The swim bait tied to a 40-pound fluoro leader matches the small bunker driving the stripers bonkers. You cast, crank the handle two or three times and — wham! You set the hook, the rod bows, and you instantly attain striper nirvana.

The fall melee between bass and bunker is a dance that anglers obsess over.

A daylight blitz is one of the sweet spots of the season. The waves transmit the afternoon light in vibrant shades of green; the foam is as white as clouds. The air is clean with little humidity, the wind is angled in our faces, and the world is as shiny as a new penny. These days are limited editions, alive with motion — darting fish, surging white water, scudding clouds, and small bands of peeps scurrying back and forth along the beach face. A thousand migrating swallows chatter from clusters of small trees and bushes behind the dunes. Not one is to be found a day later. Migrations always start before anyone takes notice.

Making changes on a quiet stretch of beach to entice a striper bite. 

RED MOON

Late September, and I awake to a tightening in my right calf that leaves me biting a corner of my blanket. I try not wake my wife, but she stirs and turns away. My head is thick from a lack of sleep, and my hands ache and sting. I rise to visions of the previous evening’s stunning scene: a red moon lifting off the horizon, the strengthening flood, the rip just big enough to leap my skiff’s covering boards.

My friend pumps a nice bass to the boat, which slaps its wide tail, showering us in cool water, some of which drips down my left boot. Laughter. The two of us release two dozen fish, the largest weighing a tick under 30 pounds. Back in the empty marina parking lot, we crack a couple of cold beers on this warm night and reflect on the good fishing. We talk about our best fish, tomorrow’s forecast and the inbound dragger that turned on its deck lights as it entered the passage between reefs, scattering those boats foolish enough to be drifting there for bass.

The marina owner’s son peels off his T-shirt in a curtainless second-story window as the moon slips across a friendly sky. After midnight, the last bits of laughter fueled by rum, gin and tequila drift our way as a party ebbs several houses down the street.

A joyful scrum ensues as birds, bait, fish and the faithful converge on a gusty fall day.

THE TRIBE

In September and early October, the beaches attract plenty of casual anglers, men and women drawn by the sun and the chance for a fish or two. On warm days, they sit chatting in small groups, their rods leaning against snow fences and beach chairs or stuck into sand spikes. Most are retirees who will catch their share if the fish decide to feed like hell at 10:40 on a Tuesday morning, when most of the world is working.

A sense of urgency surges as the days grow shorter and the migration gains momentum. I like the people I meet late in the season, on the rock piles and beaches, at launch ramps and in parking lots, the ones who keep fishing even as the pulse of fall weakens. We’re part of a small group who keep at it due to temperament or for reasons we may have trouble articulating even to ourselves.

After enough seasons, you stop asking why you are fishing after Thanksgiving and just continue to do it. One more tide, one more week, one more fish, you promise yourself. The number of anglers shrinks by the week, eventually with each tide. It’s smart to pace yourself, especially if you fish late into the year. My fishing partners and I once chased fall fish as if we were young duck dogs, all energy and slobber, not stopping until we collapsed. And then we’d do it all over again, even running hard through the dry spells.

Mary Dunham hollers in delight as she beaches a nice striper.

By mid-November, most anglers are willing to chat about the fish they’re finding. A fly angler with a tanned face and a diamond stud in his ear tells me he’s been searching all week, with limited luck. He was ready to pack it in on Thanksgiving; he’s headed home to watch a Pittsburgh Steelers game.

Another parking lot, and a surfman who fished the outer beach since dawn is putting away a pair of spinning rods and a fly rod. He says a flurry of action broke at daybreak and then nothing. An old-timer pointed to the gannets diving well offshore, he adds, which the gaffer claimed meant the season was done.

A man and two boys dressed in waders and carrying rods walk off the beach through one of the cuts in the dunes used by buggies. He’d done well on small fish until this week. “They never seem to be here when I take my sister’s kids,” he tells me. “Ah, they may still show up.”

For me, gannets dropping into a lumpy, silvery sea puts an exclamation mark on the season. But for now, I agree with the guy who’s trying to find his sister’s kids some fish. They may still show up, we hope.

A quick bearhug before releasing a beefy, fall-run striped bass. 

FISH, FISH, FISH

I drive to the boat in predawn darkness under a waning moon. It’s mid-November, and my partner and I wonder when the season will end. It’s still too dark to tie a knot, but gulls are aloft, searching and suddenly bunching up. “Hold on,” I tell my companion as I ease the throttle. “I’ve got fish.”

The gulls are working hard over a series of bars to the southeast. Once we get the wind and drifts figured out, we catch fish after fish for several hours. No trophies and not too many dinks, but healthy schoolies. The fish are small enough so you can let your mind wander, free from worries about missing a good one.

The southwesterly is gusting 15 to 20 against the current, creating a short, steep chop that lends texture and drama to the morning. The sun casts a mackerel sky as it rises through the clouds. Once the sun is clear, we gaze east at miles of white caps, breaking fish and hundreds of hovering gulls, dipping, facing into the wind-blown spray and silhouetted dark. We drink it in with eyes wide open.

I’m fishing a light, 7-foot graphite rod and tossing lead heads with chartreuse paddle tails; it’s catching more than fishing. To gauge their density in an unscientific manner, I hold the lead head a few feet behind the silent outboard, jig it a couple of times — bang! We had hoped for larger fish, but we happily take what we find. Surrounded by fish, birds and spray, fall flows through us.

BOATS

Busted forecasts are common as the seasons grind past one another, which is a challenge for those who fish from boats. Far fewer boats are on the water in November, especially when the sun is gone. A gusty November evening is not the time to take out an unschooled neighbor to whom you promised a striper trip back in September, when seas were different and the fishing relatively easy.

Late autumn leaves many small-boat owners longing for a bigger boat as conditions deteriorate.

The inshore waters are as furrowed and hard as the face of a millstone. Bam! Bam! Bam! “I’m getting too old for this,” you and your friends repeat for the umpteenth time. Twenty knots on a cold November night feels stronger than 20 knots in summer. Fall always makes me want more boat. Something longer, beamier, heavier and deeper. Something to make a fair fight out of it.

There is no shame in deciding that a reef, shoal or lee shore is too iffy to fish on a particular night. Smart anglers scurry home with their tails between their legs. There is always another tide. You are rarely happier than when you round a headland and feel the seas flatten. You promise you won’t do it again, but when you’re in the grips of the fall fever, there is another busted forecast in your near future.

THE END IS NEAR

One more November night with no wind or cloud cover, but the temperature drops like a 16-ounce sinker. You come in from the reefs, where the ocean keeps air temperatures moderate. As soon as you enter the tidal river, the cold nails you like a punch you didn’t see coming. A shiver runs the course of your spine. Plumes of sea smoke form.

The night is still. A fish breaks the surface. Somewhere across the river a dog barks. You smell wood smoke. In one breath, you inhale the approaching winter and exhale the last of fall.