If you would like to receive these weekly reports directly, just drop me a line at captaingene@montauksportfishing.com and Ill put you on the list.And, for more information about fishing in Montauk, go to montauksportfishing.com
FOR SALE: Murry Brothers fighting chair. Good condition. Call 631 668 2019
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6/29/09
I have been away for the last couple of days, so I don’t have much for you today except for the results of the Marine Basin tournament.
The weather was great, but the quality of the fish caught kind of sucked. It’s enough to make me change my mind about going after sharks today. On Friday only three bluesharks were weighed in and none of them qualified. As a result, the weight requirement for bluesharks was dropped to 200 pounds for Saturday. On Saturday, only four sharks were entered, two blues and two threshers. The results are as follows;
1st place - 388 lbs thresher - GLADIATOR
2nd place - 274 lbs blueshark - CRACK OAR
3rd place - 224 lbs blueshark - TUNA KAHUNA
6/22/09
The forecast was pretty crappy for the Star Island Shark Tournament, but I don’t think that’s the only reason that the number of participants dropped down to 127 boats. In past years it would have 225 -250 or so boats. Last year there were 190 some in it. The economy is really putting a hurting on every aspect of the recreational fishing business. Every day I take a tour of the docks to see who is out, and during the week it is pretty depressing. In past years I’d wind up getting out of the pickup and BSing a little, but this year there aren’t even any guys hanging around doing boatwork. With all the free time they’ve had, they’ve done it all.
The results are as follows;
Heaviest shark - 369 lbs thresher - RUNAWAY
1st place mako - 227 lbs - SEA WIFE IV
2nd place mako - 197 lbs - SANDRA JEANNE
3rd place mako - 136 lbs - THREE OF A KIND
1st place blueshark - 227 lbs - LADY FIN
No other bluesharks brought in
1st place thresher - 369 lbs - RUNAWAY
2nd place thresher - 289 lbs - FREEDOM
3rd place thresher - 287 lbs - FISHERMAN II
Next weekend the Montauk Marine Basin is holding their shark tournament.
I hadn’t heard of any local bluefin sightings from the shark boats, but it would have been hard to see any with the conditions, but I did hear of some being caught along with some longfins out at 50 fathoms earlier in the week.
Inshore the bass fishing is still kind of delicate, with some off the charterboats running over to the Ledge to get their limits. Around the Point there are plenty of shorts and some occasional 30-40 pound fish, but standard sized keepers require a lot of catching and culling.
It seems like the doggie population has dropped off a bit. I got out to Rocky Hill for an hour or so one day and only caught two along with enough seabass to make it worthwhile.
6/15/09
The weather guy keeps coming through on the weekends. Now it would be nice if he could get organized for the mid-week a little. After all it is summer time.
Striped bass fishing is starting to get a little delicate. All day trips are getting their limits, but half day boats are struggling. I was out bottom fishing Saturday and could tell it was getting tough just by the spacing of the charter boats. Only seeing one boat fishing any of the normal hot spots is a sure sign.
Fluke fishing is not red hot, but if you work at it you can get your limit of keepers. But, so what? The season is about to close for a couple of weeks, so unless you fish on one of the boats that has the special permit, it doesn’t make any difference. The BLUEFIN IV, MARLIN PRINCESS and VIKING are the only boats that will be able to fluke fish while the season is shut down.
If you think that the seabass will take the place of the fluke, think again. If you want to catch seabass, you will have to fight your way through the doggies. The LAZYBONES will be diamond jigging until the season re-opens on July 3.
Offshore there are plenty of bluesharks, but I have yet to hear about any exotics. But, there are so few boats fishing that there could be lots of makos and threshers swimming around out there looking for chum slicks, but they just can’t find them. Next weekend is the Star Island Tournament, so that should produce some.
There are some bluefins out there as well. I’ve heard about them being as close as the 700 line and as far out as forty fathoms, but I haven’t heard much about anyone catching them.
6/8/09
I have to compliment whoever is in charge of weather scheduling. The last two weeks it was crappy all week, but very nice on the weekend. Usually it’s the other way around.
When the fluke season opened up, nobody cared about the new regs because the fishing was so good and it wasn’t necessary to keep a ruler handy. If a fish wasn’t 5 or 6 pounds, throw it back. Now the situation is different. There are plenty of fluke being caught, but keepers are getting scarce. You can still catch a limit of eaters, but you have to work at pretty hard. Most of the boats are fishing east and north of the Point. A lot of doggies in the deeper water of the south side probably has something to do with that.
Striped bass fishing is as steady as it gets, with lots of fish being caught, most of them keepers. The charterboats have been coming back with their limits without much problem, with a lot of the fish they are bringing back in the fifteen to twenty pound range, with occasional fish of thirty pounds or so. Bluefish are around, some days more than others, but not really a problem.
A couple of charterboats have gone out for sharks, and have caught some blues. Forty fathoms seems like a sure thing, but they are probably closer in than that as well. The water temps are between fifty-five and sixty degrees, so it won’t be a surprise if someone catches a thresher this week, if enough boats get out.
The recession in the charter business seems to be going away. Now it’s starting to seem more like a depression, with most boats getting out on Saturday, maybe three-quarters of the boats getting out on Sunday and only a handful getting out during the week. The cars parked in back of the head boats indicates the same for them.
Last week I mentioned that the Concerned Citizens of Montauk had gotten a lot of biodegradable balloons for the Blessing of the Fleet next week. Well, I got an e-mail from the head balloon monitor letting me know that the balloons aren’t biodegradable enough. I guess word will get out by the weekend whether the town will cave in again or let it slide.
Next weekend is 6th Annual Montauk Harbor and Jazz Festival Weekend. It starts on Friday with the Annual Harbor Festival “Old Timers Dinner” at the Montauk Yacht Club at 7:00 pm, where eight renowned Montauk Fisherman will be honored. Tickets are $35.00 and available at the Montauk Chamber. For more info call 631-668-2428 or e-mail at info@montaukchamber.com.
6/1/09
The easterly breezes all week put a bit of a damper on the fluke fishing. They don’t like it too much when the top of the water is going up and down too much. Still on Saturday there were quite a few boats stretched out from the Point to the IGA. Sunday afternoon when I drove down the hill into the village from the west I didn’t see a single boat. Apparently they had all moved to the east and north side, but didn’t find a lot of keepers there. There were some doggie reports one day, but none the next.
Striped bass fishing is excellent even though at times the boats had to cull through a lot of shorts to take their limit.
There’s good news for the Blessing of the Fleet participants. Last year some eco-nuts, concerned about turtles diets, put pressure on the town to curtail the water balloons that are always a big part of the after blessing festivities, and word was passed that anyone caught playing could wind up with an invitation to court. This year the Concerned Citizens of Montauk has come up with a couple thousand biodegradable balloons which will be available at Snug Harbor. As an aside, years ago when we were catching tuna within spitting distance of the Point, I dressed out a couple of tuna that had eaten balloons, but they were so deteriorated by the digestion process that I couldn’t even pick them up. I’d grab a piece between my thumb and forefinger, but all I could pick up was the little piece between my fingers. the rest of the balloon stayed stuck to the fishes stomach.
Pump it yourself regular at Marshall’s is now $3.05.9.
5/26/09
Memorial Day weekend seemed pretty busy in Montauk, until I went down to the docks. At Star Island on Saturday only two charter boats got out and on Monday, none of them sailed. I didn’t get there on Sunday, but I doubt that many got out that day either. Party boats did a little better, at least going by the number of cars in their parking lots, but during the week most of them are sailing pretty light.
Fluke fishing could hardly be any better. Who cares if the regs hold you to a 21” size limit when there are so many five and six pounders around? last weekend all the boats were fishing south of the Radar Stand, but now they are spread out a little more, with some as far west as the IGA
Bass fishing is boringly good. I could probably write this part of the report for weeks on end. There are plenty of keepers around with many in the fifteen to twenty pound range, and an occasional thirty pound fish being brought back. Most are being caught on the good old chartreuse parachute. The bluefish seem to have thinned out.
5/18/09
I always put the boat that I run all summer in the water the week before Memorial Day. This weekend I was shocked to
realize that is this week, the earliest possible weekend for Memorial Day. And, it still feels like April.
Bass fishing is in fine shape, with the few (actually very few) charter boats that have been getting out catching their limits
of eight to fifteen pound fish, with an occasional twenty pounder. There are also plenty of bluefish, which on some days
were hard to avoid. On other days they stayed south of the Elbow, out of everyone’s way. I don’t like to hear about lots of
bluefish. I believe that our area can only support a certain amount of fish. When there are too many bluefish there will be
fewer bass, and vice versa.
The fluke action is hot, with lots of half inch shy fish being taken, but also a good supply of doormats, including one over
twelve pounds that was taken on the MARLIN PRINCESS this week. As is usually the case this time of year practically
all of the action is on the south side between the Point and the Radar Stand.
I was speaking to a charter guy who runs a dragger all winter about fluke. New York regs allowed a 300 pound per trip
limit on fluke all winter, now reduced to 50 pounds per trip. The boat he ran also had a permit to fish out of New Jersey,
which had a 5000 pound per week limit. He would steam sixteen hours to Barneget, leave to go fishing out of there and
run sixteen hours to a spot thirty miles south of the Point where he would fish for a couple of hours until he had his 5000
pounds and then run back to Barneget to pack out. Maybe that will give you an idea of how New York got screwed on
the recreational regs for fluke, which were based on commercial landings.
5/11/09
The fishing season in Montauk has officialy started. (All that codfish stuff was the offseason or maybe pre-season).
On Saturday a couple of charterboats had half day trips, and both caught stripers and bluefish. The bass were nothing to write home about, a mixture of shorts and eight to ten pounders. But you have to start somewhere. I’m willing to bet that by next weekend there will be a fair amount of twelve to fifteen pound fish being caught. That is if any boats are booked. The effects of the economy are being felt in the bookings.
But, the economy doesn’t seem to be helping the traffic too much. This past week I had to go up-island in the morning. The wideening of the road from the end of Sunrise to McDonalds helped a lot. But now the traffic is backed up from the Watermill Wiggle almost to the railroad tracks
The MARLIN PRINCESS made it’s first fluke trip on Saturday. The conditions were pretty yucky, but still a handfull of guys braved it out and caught some fluke, a mixture of shorts and keepers. The fluke season officially starts on this Friday, but Captain Eddie got one of those scientific fluke set asides, which means he can fish during thr closed season, with a four fish per person, twenty inch size limit. A couple of boats scored these permits back in December because they knew that the regs were going to be more stringent this year than last with the hope that they would be able to salvage a little bit extra out of their season. When the DEC came up with the new regs with a split season, it looked like a home run for the few boats that are participating in this scientific exercise. But apparently there was a lot of complaints received about the unfair advantage these boats would have over their competitors, so now they are not going to be able to fish during the mid season closure, just before and after the opening and closing dates.
4/14/09
Here I am boys and girls, crawling out of the wintertime cave. The daffodils are coming out along with the forsythia, and it’s time to start talking about the Montauk fishing scene. It’s been a lousy winter for me, but those of you who love fishing with frozen snot on your noses are probably still giggling with joy over the codfishing that took place from late January into early March. Of course that doesn’t do much for you now, since the fishing has been pretty slow for a while now.
The fluke regs are now cast in stone. The season will be open from May 15 to June 15 and again from July 3 to August 17, with a two fish per person bag limit at twenty-one inches long. And, if you think that is bad, wait until next year. It will be worse.
Here is my assessment of how we arrived at this point in the fluke fiasco; Once upon a time, the commercial draggers found out where the fluke spent their winter vacations and proceeded to pound away at them until there were so few left that regulations had to be put in place to protect them The powers that be came up with a number of fish that they determined somehow to be how many fish should exist, and then had to come up with some regs to accomplish that goal. The first step was to divide the fluke pie between commercial and recreational interests. Before the pounding took place, fluke were primarily a recreational fish, but it was decided that 60% of the pie should go to the commercial interests and 40% to the recreational side. This was because it was determined by the “best available science” that the commercials were landing 60% of the fluke. Of course the commercials were catching more fluke because they had almost wiped out the fluke before they got inshore where the recreationals could catch any. And, there were hard numbers attesting to the commercial landings while the best that they could come up with for the recreational side was a wild-ass guess. That was the first stage of the screwing we got. And, there is no way that division is ever going to change,
Next they had to decide how to divide up the recreational pie by state. Here is where New York got screwed. Thanks to our states fuel taxes, we pay considerably more for fuel than Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey. As a result, New your draggers that fished 60-70 miles offshore for the fluke found it economical to pack out in the neighboring states where they could buy much cheaper fuel. Here were some hard numbers that could be used to determine each state’s share of the fluke. Of course commercial landings had no bearing whatsoever on recreational landings, but the good old “best science available” came into play. There were no recreational numbers other than wild-ass guesses, and that isn’t science. In order for this to change, all the other states have to vote to reduce their quota in order to increase New York’s quota. If that ever happens, those guys from all the other states better move to New York, because it isn’t going to be safe for them to go home. There is currently a lawsuit being pressed to force the powers that be to come up with one set of regs that will cover all the states, but in reality if that were to happen, it would be as unfair to all the other states as the current regs are to New York. The larger fluke are mostly in their eastern range, and we here in Montauk, can put up with a larger size limit than they can in Virginia or even at the western end of the island.
Here is where the new fishing license that we are all going to wind up with can make a difference. When all the states have a salt water fishing license, there will finally be some “best available science” to determine how many recreational anglers exist in each state, and thereby determine how the fluke pie should be divided. Will that happen? Your guess is as good as mine, but it seems like a reasonable solution to me. Now here is something else that may frost the old huevos. Right off the top of the fluke, pie three percent (approximately 500,000 pounds) has been removed for scientific research under something called the Research Set-aside Program. This covers fluke, seabass and porgies, but right now I’m only talking about fluke. Someone applies for this program in the same way that a scientist would apply to the government for a research grant and is awarded the grant allowing it to take a certain amount of pounds of fish outside of the existing regulations. Apparently, or maybe allegedly is a better term, the National Fisheries Institute, which is the lobbying arm of the commercial fishing industry in Washington, has been given control over a certain amount of the research piece of the pie and, they have been auctioning it off. In other words, a boat owner bids on x amount of pounds of fluke, pays his money and is allowed to catch those fish whenever he wants regardless of the seasons. The draggers have been the main beneficiaries of this program ever since it’s inception, but now things have changed, and a number of party and charter boats have latched onto it. They had to pay $1000 to enlist in the program and have bid as high as $3.00/pound for every fluke that they want to catch outside the regs. Before this year the going rate was less than $1.00/pound.
So, now when the fluke season shuts down on June 15, these boats are going to be able to legally put a big sign by their boats that state “FLUKE NOW”, while their neighbors sit and wonder where all their fares went, Actually they probably won’t have to wonder very long, because they’ll be able to wave to them as they board those winning bidder’s boats. A skeptic might wonder who is keeping track of the amount of set-aside fish that each boat is taking. It is an honor (or maybe dishonor) system, much like income tax. You tell the government how much income you have and then pay your taxes based on that. These boats have to report when they leave the dock, when they return and how many pounds of fluke they caught. And, we all know that nobody ever cheats on their taxes, right.
I’ll start posting reports regularly in early May when things start to get more exciting.
2/16/09
I wish I had the parking concession for the Viking area. Except for one day this week when it blew, there have been more cars parked there than I have ever seen in my life, at any time of year. And, it’s all the cod fish’s fault. There are too may of them and they are all hungry.
The fishing is unreal. The Viking started out the end of January planning to run on Friday, Saturday and Sundays, but now both boats are sailing every day, railed. Don’t have a reservation? Don’t bother to come out. There is no room for you. Montauk has even had to import a boat, the ROSIE from Moriches is sailing out of the MARLIN PRINCESS slip, also railed.
A friend e-mailed me about ten days or so ago. He wanted to go out on the Viking, but it was fully booked, so I told him to give CAPT MARK a call. At this time of year he will sail on an open boat basis if he doesn’t have a charter. He checked with Mark and booked a day later this month, the only date he had available until St Patrick’s Day (the real one, not the parade Sunday).
I have been putting these reports out throughout the season since 1995. I went back and checked, and this is the first time I ever posted one in February. That will give you an idea of how good the codfishing is.
I addition to the boats mentioned above, The MISS MONTAUK and MARLIN V, both open boats are sailing as are the VIVIENNE and LORY JAY, both six pack boats.
The auction for the CRICKET came and went without a qualifying bid, although someone offered $40,000 for it. Apparently a sail is being negotiated. But now Henry Uhlein is trying to put a deal together with the town of East Hampton to buy it for $45,000, and put it on display at the entrance to the harbor area. It’s a good idea, but maybe not workable.
If you finally realized that the financial mess hasn’t cut into you yet and you can afford to go fishing somewhere this winter, give me a call. Fishing is hot in Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama. In fact, Tropic Star Lodge in Panama continues to come up with cancellations. It’s a fantastic place, and if you have the $$$ and want the fishing adventure of a lifetime It’s a great choice.
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