Montauk Pioneer - August 29, 2008

This past Saturday I decided to try something different, something I haven't done in years, I went spear fishing! When I was younger I used to spend a lot of time in the Florida Keys, of course to fish, but I also did a lot of snorkeling and even some diving on some of the famous reefs along the keys. But I never really did any scuba diving or snorkeling around here. I was surprised how awesome it really was under the surface out here.

The water was crystal clear and the visibility was great, around 15 feet or so. We were going to go over to the east cut of Shinnicock inlet, over on the Southampton side, but instead we decided to give Moriches Inlet a shot. I used to think those people diving in the Inlet were crazy, but on this day we were those guys. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was. The current wasn't bad at all, you just had to be alert because of all the traffic being that it was a Saturday. We worked the whole east cut of the inlet, and it was amazing. There was so much life along these rock edges, it was like a coral reef, except blackfish, and sea bass ruled the population instead of yellowtail snapper and grouper. It's too bad it wasn't black fish season yet, but I do know what I'm going to be doing come October 1. It was loaded with blackfish, some of them looked to be easily 10 lbs. We saw fluke all over the inlet floor, but they were all short, tough to tell under water, but I didn't want to risk killing a fluke for no reason. There were also schoolie bass that would swim under us occasionally. I only took one shot the entire afternoon at a triggerfish that was running from me, so it was a tough angle shot. I missed, and he lived to see another day. It was the only school of triggers I saw and I blew my shot, literally. All in all though it was a great day. We spent about 5 hours in the water on a beautiful day, the water was warm and clear, and there was plenty of sea life. A lot different then fishing, it was a total different experience. I was in their environment, and instead of hoping for a fish to take my bait, I could choose which fish I was going to get. There are no shorts in spear fishing, because you learn to only shoot at fish you know are going to be keepers. You also get to see how all these fish live and swim in their world. I think I found my new favorite thing to do, well that is when the tuna aren't there, and the offshore bite is bad.

Speaking of which, the offshore bite, ah yes. Where is it? Well the tuna bite at the canyons is still a strange one this year. Not much of anything going on out in the deep. I even heard a report from one of the long liners who trolled from around 100 miles south of the dip to the dip and didn't have a single tuna. There are a few people who go out and get lucky who work all day and night, and come home with around 4 yellows. Where are the tuna? A question everyone is asking. The good news is, there is still a lot of shark action, I've heard numerous reports of mako still being taken, There's a lot of pups out there, but if you work hard, you'll find a keeper. If I was going to go offshore though, I would probably not waste my gas running too deep. There is plenty of action inside 30 miles. All of the bigger mahi have made there was inside 20 miles, and I've heard reports of wahoo being taken in close as well. The water is warm and on all my trips to the canyon last week, 2 of them, all the bait was inside on the way home. We even found a board about 30 miles out that had hundreds of mahi under it.

I'm going out tomorrow haven't decided what for yet. My options right now are striped bassing off the point, fluking in shinnicock, or taking a shark/mahi trip. Right now I'm leaning towards the Mahi trip, because if I go out targeting just them, I am going to have a full cooler of mahi for the grill when I get back to the dock.