On the Chesapeake they call striped bass "rockfish," and they talk about them the way other regions talk about weather or politics, constantly, confidently, and with numbers that don’t survive an audit.
The bet was five dollars. My uncle claimed the light line off the old lighthouse held better fish on the last of the ebb; my cousin swore by the channel edge on the flood, and had a laminated tide chart he treated like scripture. The deadrise we borrowed had a cooler older than both arguments.
Last of the ebb, first cast into the light line: thump. A mid-Atlantic rockfish with a back like a fence rail came aboard glowing that impossible spring-water silver, and my uncle began a victory lap that continues, at family gatherings, to this day.
What his retelling omits, and what the rest of the boat is legally required to add, is that the NEXT three fish, including the biggest of the trip, all came off the channel edge on the flood, exactly where the laminated chart said they would. The bay, in her wisdom, paid out both sides of the bet and kept the five dollars.
The lighthouse doesn’t care who was right. That’s why we like fishing under it.