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These Days, Muresan Gets Assists While Fishing
Brener puts his own boat away at the end of the summer and leaves the cold-weather driving to others. Dahlberg is among the growing number of Chesapeake charter skippers who keep their boats on trailers so they can go where the fish are and keep busy all year. He'll work Maryland portions of the lower Bay into November, then head south to the mouth of the estuary to fish the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel off Norfolk through New Year's.
He's an advocate of light-tackle jigging, and the bigger the fish the better. He has a portfolio of photos of 20- to 40-pound rockfish taken by clients on light tackle from the Susquehanna Flats at the head of the bay to the Bridge-Tunnel at the mouth.
  Former Washington Bullets center Gheorghe Muresan, middle, stands next to fishing partners Billy Brener, left, and Pete Dahlberg. Below, Muresan fishes with Brener. "He's our human tuna tower," said Brener of Muresan, who is 7-feet-7. (By Angus Phillips For The Washington Post) |
"I'm hoping we can get into some big ones today," he said as we forged out into the windswept Chesapeake from Buzz's Marina at St. Jerome's Creek. We didn't, as it turned out, but it wasn't for lack of trying.
Dahlberg covered 30 miles and more of the churning Chesapeake hunting big fish, but all we found were medium-sized ones. After several stops around the Southwest Middle Grounds, where most of the fish were too small to keep, he found a hungry mass of rockfish clinging to a channel edge at Smith Point, Va., at the southern end of the Potomac, with plenty of keepers over 18 inches in the mix.
With a flood tide bucking up against strong northerly winds, the bay built a prodigious chop and it was all you could do to keep your feet. The challenge was double for Muresan.
When he stands up to fish, the gunwales we use to brace our thighs only come up to his shins. He's taller sitting down than Brener is standing up.
But we muddled through and by 2 p.m. quitting time had our limit of rockfish, one keeper bluefish and plenty to smile about.
Muresan made a reputation as a soft-spoken, gentle man during his years playing ball here, and it was not misplaced. It's not easy being 7 feet 7. Everywhere he goes, eyes grow wide and kids come running. Somehow, Muresan manages to take it all in stride; he'll pose for pictures till the film runs out.
He says he loves working with the kids at his camps. "I like to watch them grow," he says. "They learn so fast."
It's good that the Wizards have found a place here for Big Gheorghe. Even if he can't go thundering up and down the court any more the way he used to, he can still find fish for the little people like us.
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