Category Archives: 2007 IN THE NEWS

IN THE FIELD

Bass Fishing Ends Quietly

By Michael Wright
 

Well, that, as the saying goes, was that. The striped bass season will close on Saturday, December 15,

 but it will have effectively ended for most fishermen long before that. Plummeting temperatures,

a couple big storms, the long stay of bunker in the surf zone and the fickle nature of fish in general

brought the premature end to what was a largely disappointing fishing season for East End bass fishermen.
The herring run that was supposed to bring a grand finale to the fishing season, as it has done

in most recent years, apparently just ain’t going to happen this time around.

The herring came, but either in too few numbers or too late to attract big numbers of striped bass to our waters.
Now if you are a completely hopeless optimist or just don’t have anything at all to be doing with your time,

there are most certainly still a few striped bass to be caught out there, both on the beach or in the boat.

 There are some herring in Montauk. The few boats that put in enough time to catch a live well full

of them and then had the patience to bounce from rip to rip in search of life caught some decent stripers over

the weekend but had long lulls between bites. No one had more than a few fish.
Presumably, those herring will have to move on at some point and the few straggling stripers that there are

 will probably follow them. If you are ultra-vigilant and are in the right place at the right time, there may

yet be some fish in the surf to be caught. Whether that will happen before the close of the season remains to be seen.

Or the fish may just head offshore amid this week’s stormy forecast and it may not happen at all. But, hey,

 keep looking.
So East End outdoorsmen are left with two options: Go hunting or go black fishing.

The weather forecast this week, at least, seems to favor trips to the duck blind over the blackfish grounds.
If you’re not a gunner, there are still lots of blackfish and their cohorts to be had.

The reefs and wrecks off Montauk, Shinnecock and Moriches are holding a good number

of ’togs, sea bass, bergalls (or cunners), big porgies and some codfish, and they all seem t

o be plenty hungry. Pete Haskell weighed in a 27-pound cod caught on a wreck in 175 feet

of water off Shinnecock last week, and the Montauk charter captains put lots of

 nice togs on ice this week. If you are shore bound and itching for something to pull on,

there are some herring at Gann Road in East Hampton and a few in the Shinnecock Canal,

both of which should get better in the coming weeks. The Montauk party boats are switching

 over to cod fishing in the next week and hoping for some better fish. Otherwise,

it seems like there are plenty of geese in town, if you have a pit to hunt them from.

Some more ducks will no doubt be moving into the area with this big storm coming

out of the Midwest and the Great Lakes settling into the depths of winter.

Check out The New York Times’ story from Monday about the effects of global

warming on duck hunting in the Midwest—there’s some good pictures.
Catch ’em up, if you can. See you out there.