Dan's Papers - October 10, 2008

Coastal water temperature is dropping a little each day, so bait in the creeks, bays and inlets is starting to head south. Bluefish, striped bass and other predators are going after the bait and we have been seeing great blitzes of these predator fish this fall.

In Montauk, there are large numbers of blues, stripers and false albacore being caught by boat anglers and surfcasters. There is action at Camp Hero especially at sunrise and sunset. Last weekend, surfcaster Willie Young caught a 52.12 poundstriped bass on a bottle plug at night. This puts him in first place in the striper division of the ongoing Montauk Locals Surfasting Tournament. The tournament runs through December 1; information, registration and weigh-ins for the tournament are at Paulie's Tackle Shop, 631-688-5520.

All the Montauk charter and party boats have been catching loads of fish. The charter boat Wake brought in bluefish and striped bass up to 38 pounds. One angler on the Barbara Ann had a 57.15-pound striper and another on the Lady Grace has a 43-pound striper. Offshore charters have also been bringing home good catches. The Ventura brought in a 328-pound bluefin tuna which took more than 3 hours to secure, and the Betty Lisa, fishing at the west Atlantis canyon, had an 85-pound yellowfin tuna and a 125-pound swordfish caught at night.

Harvey Bennett of Amagansett's Tackle Shop tells us a flyfishing client caught and released 24 false albacore and many bluefish. There are also striped bass and bluefish being caught at the ocean beaches.

Ken Morse of Tight Lines Tackle, Sag Harbor, reports some of his boating clients, fishing northeast of Plum Gut in 40 to 60-foot depths, caught blackfish up to nine pounds and several sea bass. There are also reports of blackfish at the brickyards area west of Greenport and north of Shelter Island. (Keeper-size for blackfish is a minimum of 14 inches.) Striped bass are being caught at the Ruins north of Gardiner's Island.

Scott at East End Bait and Tackle, Hampton Bays, says boats trolling with wire line and umbrella rigs just outside the Shinnecock inlet are catching 30 to 40 stripers per trip, many of them keeper-sized (minimum 28 inches). At the Ponquogue Bridge, fishermen are catching stripers with clams and bunker chunks. Offshore, there has been a bluefin tuna bite 35 miles south of Montauk; the tuna are in the 30-pound range with bigger fish mixed in. Look for the commercial draggers and you can find the schools of tuna.

Dr Ellen Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Sciences (now headquartered at Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences), presented some mind-boggling statistics about the fish population off the northeastern U.S. coast at her public talk last Friday evening. Past research shows there were more than 11 tons of fish per square kilometer in northeast coastal waters in 1900 but, by 2000, most of those fish were gone. She estimates almost total collapse of world fisheries by 2048.

As reported here last week, some of this is due to marine habitat destruction (especially by commercial fisherman from all countries dragging nets across the ocean floor which destroys marine plant life and captures other marine life besides the desired species), and much to overfishing. Marine scientists are learning that different species take many more years to mature and reproduce than originally thought. Catching tons of adults of one species and not allowing them time to reproduce just about guarantees collapse of that species. Some of the disappearing fish Dr. Pikitch spoke about are orange roughy, sturgeon and sharks.