The East River must have its peculiar charms—though none immediately spring to mind—but one of them certainly isn't sport fishing. Yet there was Peter Hauspurg, the CEO of Eastern Consolidated, a real-estate investment-services firm, on a recent weekday afternoon together with Peter Takiff, his CFO, and Louis Ricci, the company's shirtless director, trolling for striped bass opposite the U.N. as casually as if they were bonefishing in the Bahamas, which they've also been known to do.

East River Fishing Expedition

A three-hour tour on the East River snagged a slew of striped bass.

Peter Hauspurg, left, and Louis Ricci with some of their catch. Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal

I joined them halfway through their three-hour voyage, hurrying from a college-graduation lunch for my daughter to be picked up at the East 23rd Street marina. Happily, my photographer, Daniella Zalcman, was with them from the start. Readers may recall Ms. Zalcman as the fearless 24-year-old who shed her seat belt to shoot photos flat on her stomach from the deck of a Marine Corps Osprey circling Manhattan during Fleet Week.

Despite her precocious age and modest stature—the photographer isn't much more than 5 feet tall—Daniella might be described as the strong, silent type. Yet as I sat there at lunch wolfing down my black sea bass so as to be able to catch at least some of the adventure, my colleague was sending me updates such as: "Oh my god, these fish are huge…."

And sure enough, the striped bass, which had taken refuge in the boat's cooler by the time I arrived, were handsome-looking specimens—greenish silver, almost a yard long and weighing about 15 pounds.

Tony DiLernia filets a fish. Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal

Before we proceed any further, I probably ought to address a question I suspect may be on people's minds (it was certainly on mine): What madness would possess anybody to eat fish out of that biohazard known as the East River? But the boat's skipper, Tony DiLernia, assured me that the fish are safe to eat. Here's why, according to Mr. DiLernia: In essence, they don't live in the river; they're only visiting. They're basically tourists.

"Otherwise you wouldn't touch them," he explained. "They're on their way from North Carolina to Maine."

That made me feel better, not that I had any intention of taking up the skipper's offer, or that of his passengers, that I help myself to some of the afternoon's catch, take it home, coat it in flour and fry it up for dinner, the way Mr. Hauspurg planned to do—and not because I had fish for lunch.

"Once they're in the river a little while they get brown," Mr. DiLernia reported.

"Wouldn't you?" interjected Mr. Ricci.

But it's not what you're thinking. They don't turn brown because they become polluted or radioactive or whatever happens to fish when they hang out by the Con Ed plant on 15th Street.

"They adapt their coloration to their surroundings," Mr. DiLernia explained.


It turns out that fishing the East River does have its attractions. Here are some of them: You're never more than a few hundred feet from shore, so it's easy to play hooky from work (Mr. DiLernia said that a client once left his office, caught a fish and returned to dry land—all within 10 minutes). And Mr. Hauspurg pointed out that when he's fishing under the U.N. he's probably no more than a thousand feet from his Lexington Avenue office. Another benefit is that you get to enjoy unparalleled views of Manhattan. "From a real-estate point of view, this is the best way to see the city," the real-estate executive said, though I doubt he was suggesting the outing was tax-deductible.

As Mr. DiLernia noted, regarding the specialness of the experience, and perhaps rationalizing his steep $1,050 fee for up to five persons for the three-hour tour (which also includes his wife's delicious meatballs, not to mention all the beer, soda, Red Bull and pretzel sticks you can eat): "There are 50,000 people in Yankee Stadium and five guys fishing on the East River each night."

On the other hand, there may be good reason why the party-boat scene doesn't quite reach the critical mass it does in Miami or San Juan. One of them was the tugs toting giant barges that would bear down on us every now and then.

"A lot of tugs like coming through on the slack tide," Mr. DiLernia explained serenely. "There's a parade of them coming down."

"We didn't sign up for this tug business, Tony," Mr. Takiff joked.

"Hold on," the skipper ordered, referring to the tug's wake. "We're going to rock pretty good."

And we did. Not that we felt in imminent peril. After 40 years on the river, Mr. DiLernia knows what he's doing. As a matter of fact, he's the director of maritime technology at Kingsborough Community College and said he's trained some of the tug captains now plying the river.

"I do this as a side job," he explained.

His knowledge of the city's treacherous tides and currents is consummate. "I don't usually troll," he said in apology as we headed north toward the U.N. "But in the 10- to 15-minute slack tide when the water isn't moving I will troll. It increases our chances of catching a fish."

We didn't, lowering anchor in about 36 feet of water about 100 feet south of U Thant Island, a rocky outcropping populated by cormorants, opposite the U.N. "The fish like structure," he explained. "They like to hide behind rocks and ambush little fish."

Chartering Mr. DiLernia's boat isn't exactly Hemingwayesque. Not only does he transport you to the fish, pointing them out on his sonar, he also threads the lures and baits them. Then he casts your line for you.

And sure enough, just as he predicted, once the incoming tide picked up shortly after 4 p.m., a striper struck. Mr. Hauspurg removed the rod from its holder and started to reel it in, the rod almost doubling over in his struggle against the bass. For those few moments it was possible to forget you were within spitting distance of your office. If nothing else, you could scratch your head at the blissful incongruity of fighting a fish in the shadow of the Empire State Building, the U.N. and Sutton Place.

When the creature was within arm's length of the boat, the captain netted him. The shiny fish flopped around the deck until Mr. DiLernia expertly removed the lure from his mouth and tossed him back into the river—his clients having already landed more than they'd be able to consume promptly.

The fish floated on the surface, looking all but dead. "He's going to flip his tail and dive down within the next 30 seconds," Mr. DiLneria predicted.

"He's looking pretty laid back," one of his customers observed skeptically.

But just as the captain predicted, the fish sprang to life and vanished beneath the surface of the water.

"I told you," he said.