The weather this summer is about as lousy as
I can remember. Even when it isn’t as hot
as hell, the humidity is so high that it feels
that way. Then the rains come along with some
south-westerly winds just to give you something
else to complain about.
Somebody tell Mother Nature that the drought
is over, and she can stop trying to catch
up.
The fishing isn’t much better either.
Offshore the boats that are trying to catch
yellowfins are keeping their eyes peeled
for some lobster pot buoys so they can bail out
the trip with some dolphins.
There are still yellowfins out there, but not
a lot of them, and scattered all over the place.
The bottom line is that you have an equal chance
of catching one, two or none, and the ones that
are being caught are all from fifteen to
twenty-five pounds - not very impressive.
If you want to fish offshore, you probably
would be wise to go after sharks.
There are
some blue sharks and makos around,
but most of the makos are small. Capt Barry
Kohlus took a keeper this week, but he told me
that the six previous ones were all too small to
bring home.
The Star Island Yacht Club has their Mako
Mania Tournament this Friday and Saturday. It
isn’t as big a deal as the tournaments in
June are, but there will be a little action at
the dock. The winners in this tournament are
usually in the hundred pound range, but there
are also usually a good amount of the toothy
critters caught.
Every once in a while I mention the giant
bluefin rumors. I finally spoke to someone who
went down there to check it out. He did mark
some fish, but didn’t raise any.
There were two other boats there from
Shinnecock, but they didn’t see anything
either.
The squid boats were only about three miles
from the inlet in about 90’ of water, but
they didn’t seem to be catching much
either. Apparently there are some fish there,
but they’re not behind all of the boats,
nor are they there all the time.
The season for sea bass was supposed to be
closed for two weeks starting about now, to give
them a chance to make whoopee. However, that has
been changed. There will be no closed season. I
don’t know if that is because
they’re not going to get any action this
year or if the scientists got their dates
wrong.
Porgy fishing is getting pretty good, which
really irks the local pinhookers who were knocked out of
their season by the DEC.
The KING WAYNE caught a bunch of them along
with some sea bass and fluke right out in front
of the inlet on Sunday.
Striped bass fishing is still a struggle,
although there are some good sized fish
beingtaken by the charter boats, mostly by
trolling big, single tubes, and still mainly in
the area around The Elbow.
The chunking fleet is pretty small this year
compared to the past couple of years, with the
reason being that the method hasn’t been
producing like we have come to expect.
I think the problem is that there just
aren’t as many bass around this
year.
