There is a particular kind of fishing day that only really exists on Cape Cod - the one where a freshwater kettle pond and an Atlantic striper beach are a fifteen-minute drive apart, and a single angler with a single rod can chase the so-called Cape Cod Slam in a daylight window.
The rules, as set out by a Massachusetts shore angler who slept in the back of his car the night before, were tight on purpose.
"My goal is to catch every species of bass you can catch on Cape Cod," he said, framing the day at first light. "Those bass being largemouth, smallmouth and striped bass. Going to see if I can catch all of them in one day."
Black sea bass got cut from the list. Not, the angler said, because they did not count, but because they sit in a different sportfishing class and they are notoriously hard to target consistently from shore in May.
The rod for the day was a 6'6" Ugly Stik, normally his early-season striper ultralight. He paired it with a Z-Man shrimp imitation for the freshwater leg and a glide bait for the ocean.
"Boom, there we go. There's one bass down," he said. "Let's see if we can get a smallmouth now."
The smallmouth was a fatter one than expected.
"Oh, I think it's a smallmouth. Yes it is. Oh, he's fat," the angler said. "Look at that on the Z-Man shrimp. There we go. We got our largemouth and our smallmouth."
The freshwater leg also produced what he described as a giant yellow perch that absolutely inhaled the same shrimp soft plastic, plus a handful of largies in the two-to-three-pound class that hit on the drop. Crucially, two of the three species were already on the board by the time he hit the ocean side of the Cape.
The striper grind is where the day turned into a campaign.
"For whatever reason, I literally cannot get a striper," he said, hours in, with a glide bait blow-up and a follow from a fish he later estimated in the high thirties. "I had one blow up in my glide bait and I had like an upper 30s follow it in, but I cannot for the life of me get one."
He hopped spots. Channels. Back bays. The south side of the Cape, and then back across. Around five hours into the search, on the third strike his glide bait had drawn, he finally got a fish to commit.
"That completes the Cape Cod Bass Slam," he said. "I have been on the grind for a striper for a long time. It's been like four or five hours, so it feels good to finally get one."
"I fished almost five hours, four different spots," the angler said. "That fish I just caught was the third one that hit my glide bait. And I had even a follow from a striper that was probably close to 40 - in between 38 and 40."
His post-slam summary doubles as a recipe other Cape Cod shore anglers can lift directly for a May day. Hit the kettle pond at low tide with a soft-plastic shrimp on the bottom for largemouth and smallmouth. Move to the saltwater on the rising tide. Throw a glide bait through channels and back bays into the bigger schools that move through on the change.
"If you guys live near salt water, I encourage you to go and try and catch all three types of bass - smallmouth, largemouth and striped bass," the angler said. "And if you can get it, black sea bass."
The Cape Cod Slam is not, strictly speaking, a recognised tournament. It is an angler's challenge - a willing geographic accident of having three different bass species swimming in fishable water within driving distance of the same parking lot. On the right May morning, with a Z-Man shrimp and a glide bait, it is now a confirmed daylight job.