Anglers Earn Their Stripes in New York

Brendan McCarthy spends half the year on the waters around New York City as a fishing guide. (By Michael Keegan)

Looking for a River-Runs-Through-It fishing experience in New York City?

Fuhgeddaboutit!

This fishing is like the city: loud, gritty and in-your-face. Factories, working-class neighborhoods and the occasional abandoned building line much of the shore. The waters we fished were remarkably clear, which only made it easier to see the tires and other trash on the bottom.

But it is the only-in-New-York moments that made the trip memorable. The crazy-fast cab ride on Saturday morning with a friendly Iranian who shared his family's special way of grilling fish. Carrying fishing rods and tackle bags on the subway at dawn so we could rendezvous with McCarthy in Brooklyn. Watching a loan shark doing business on a cellphone at the marina where McCarthy kept his boat.

Then there was McCarthy himself. Like any good guide, he knows how to fish and how to tell a story. A native of Boston, he moved to the city in 1990 to become an actor. "I was terrible," he laughed. McCarthy did hard time as a bartender and became a fishing guide "legally" in 1998. Now he guides 170 days a year and supplements his income selling real estate, mostly to people he's taken fishing.

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"Want to go to lunch?" McCarthy asked as we were warming up in his car after fishing on Sunday.

Why not? The morning had been tough. A cold front had moved through overnight, followed by a stiff east wind that brought temperatures in the low 60s. But the fishing had been as good as the weather had been bad, and we quit, satisfied, early in the afternoon.

Ten minutes later, deep in a Brooklyn working-class neighborhood, McCarthy parked in front of Spumoni Gardens, a local landmark since 1939. "Get the Sicilian pizza. . . . It's square. They put the cheese on first, then the sauce," he said.

On any Saturday night in the summer, the lights over the crowded outdoor patio at Spumoni Gardens shine on the many faces of Brooklyn. "Blacks and Russians from the neighborhood. Italians from Bensonhurst, Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay. Syrian Jews from Ocean Parkway, young people, old people . . . and with them, all of the relatives who have moved out on the Island," McCarthy said. "Everyone has to stop here because they don't have pizza like that where they moved to. No pizza like it anywhere."

Exactly like the fishing in New York City: Nothing like it anywhere.