FishTales

How did we survive before Murdoch Ran the WS Journal?

July 26, 2010

First of all, don’t believe anything you read in this surf fishing article from the Wall Street Journal.  There are NO FISH in Montauk.  Not now; Not ever.  They’re all in Jersey.  I swear. Please tell ALL your friends.

Freddie "The Eel": He only comes out at night. (Photo by Jack Yee)

Furthermore, the author took some liberties with Fred Kalkstein’s nickname.  It is “Freddie The Eel”.  That’s a shame, too. Because while Melnyk gets all the press, Freddie gets all the fish. The BIG fish. He used to live on my street in Amagansett and, back in the day, we’d chase schools of bluefish together on the sandy beaches. But then the quest for big bass became a jihad for Freddie and he went native.  For years now, Freddie ONLY fishes at night and ALONE.  He actually had a live-eel tank installed into a new beach house he had constructed some years back.  Freddie never tells anyone exactly where he fishes.  We all know the general vicinity: The rocky southside beaches that stretch from Ditch Plains east of the village of Montauk to the moors approaching the old Air Force radar station and the lighthouse. But the precise rock where Freddie perches and casts and catches is a well kept secret.  Pound for pound, cast for cast, Freddie outfishes everyone.

The “Unofficial” Opening Report of the 2010 Season.

July 9, 2010: Were this the “official” report, or were I to say that I witnessed or in any way “participated” in the following events, it could be construed as a violation of my contract.

Therefore, I will simply pass along what others have reported, such as this Newsday newspaper article about marauding bluefish biting and chasing swimmers from the water and closing the Hither Hills beach for the afternoon. There was a similar eyewitness tale from Noreast.com and, finally, a fish call I received from Big Bob Wilsusen who got in on the action right in front of my house on Treasure Island beach in Amagansett between 330pm and 4pm.

Big Bob Wilsusen's Bad-Ass Bunker-Chomping Beach-Caught Bluefish. One of 2 eight-10 pounders. Treasure Island Beach, Amagansett, July 9, 2010; 4pm

Bob reached me on the “fish phone” as I was heading east for the weekend.  Two of his house guests had returned from the ocean beach dejected because “fish jumping everywhere in the water” ruined their afternoon by the shore.  Bob mobilized three rods, his brother-in-law and nephew from Florida, and was back at the beach in less than 30 minutes.  He called me on the way and I arrived to find his near 10-pounder breathing its last on the sand.  This was his second fish.  Earlier, Bob reported, he had “one cast, one fish”.  Bob’s wife Karen doesn’t cotton to bluefish so his quarry was my gain.  Filetted, seasoned and onto the grill within a few hours, it made a tasty dinner Friday night dinner. To wit:

RECIPE FOR GRILLED BLUEFISH FILETS

Rinse skinned filets and pat dry with paper towels.

In a shallow baking dish, mix up a tablespoon or so of olive oil, salt, pepper lemon and a little white wine.  For this dressing, less is more.  You only want to coat the fish not marinade it.

Spray some Pam on the grates of a hot grill or rub with olive or vegetable oil.  Lay down the filets and give them 3 to five minutes on the first side, depending upon the heat of your grill and the thickness of the fish.

With a wide metal spatula, carefully turn the fillets. Another two minutes on the second side and you should be good to go.

Variations: you can spice up the dressing with any seasonings or herbs you wish, including soy sauce, fresh ginger and/or garlic, tyhme, etc.  And for sandwiches, put these filets on the bread of your choice with a slice of tomato, onion, lettuce and/or basil, dress with a touch of olive oil or mayonnaise, or pesto, and you have a yummy Long Island BLT (Bluefish, Lettuce & Tomato).

DECEMBER 31, 2009

DECEMBER 25, 2009

It gets a tad freaky-deaky on the beach once fishing season ends

Christmas Striper? Not exactly More shenanigans from the funny Frenchman……………..

……………….And this one is from one of Treasure Island Drive’s own:

I hope it was a great Christmas for you all!

DECEMBER 23, 2009

A Fishmas Card for Surfcasters: Striper Blitz!

The beginning of the holiday season is, alas, the official end of the striped bass fishing season. In years like this, when the bass are wont to hang around our beaches in the mild ocean waters right up until the very eve of Christmas, the two seasons meld together so as to make the passage a tough one for local surfcasters. In honor of this winter segway, my Big Brother Frank and I make a tradition of rewriting a classic holiday tune. The annual “Fishmas” song is a therapeutic way for us to smooth the transition from lure casters to stocking hangers.

Lyrics by Fred and Frank Abatemarco (with apologies to Silver Bells song writers Jay Livingston and Ray Evans), graphics by Chaweenie, photo by Jack Yee.

STRIPER BLITZ

(to the tune of Silver Bells)

Montauk beaches, busy beaches

Filled with Sharpies galore,

In the surf

There’s a big school

of stripers.

Bass are splashing

Anglers casting

Throwing diamond-jig lures

And from ev’ry surfcaster you’ll hear

Striper blitz, striper blitz

It’s Fishmas time out in Montauk

Keeper bass, on ev’ry cast

Soon it will be Fishmas day.

Soon it will be Fishmas day.

Fish at first light

Even twi-light

Caught on lures red and green

With a teaser

That mimics a sand eel

Make your first stop

Harvey’s Tackle Shop

This is Jack Yee’s big scene

And in Paulie’s of Montauk

You’ll hear

Striper blitz, striper blitz

It’s Fishmas time out in Montauk

Keeper bass, on ev’ry cast

Soon it will be Fishmas day.

Oh my gosh! It’s a surf turkey!

More fun with Photoshop from the Frenchman.

End of season sharpshooting by surfcasters on Long Island’s East End

Hunting for wild turkey (the bird, not the Bourbon!) opened last week in East Hampton, a limited hunt and the first since before World War II. Turkeys were stocked in the area, starting about a decade ago, and now they are fairly common. A Bonacker’s Thanksgiving, however, didn’t always include turkey on the table.

Harvey Bennett of Amagansett’s Tackle Shop bagged this wild turkey during the limited hunt before Thanksgiving

On the East End, Bonackers (short for the Indian word Accabonac, which roughly means land of ground nuts), are the descendants of the earliest working class English settlers of the hamlet known as Springs. Only a few such families remain of what used to be farmers, baymen and fishermen. The Bonacker family names most commonly include Miller, King, Bennett, Conklin, Havens, Strong and Lester.

These “bubs” lived low on the food chain. In the toughest of times, particularly during the Great Depression, Bonackers were known to eschew the traditional turkey on Thanksgiving and, instead, stuff a big meaty codfish with scallops, stale bread and whatever veggies their gardens would yield. Perhaps there would be some oyster stew or clam chowder, clam fritters or clam pie as well. The codfish, scallops, oysters and clams were plentiful and cheap, cheap, cheap back in the day. Not so any more.

So whether you are fortunate enough to have a fat fowl on your table this holiday, or you are giving a turkey a break by serving a ham, or perhaps a Bonacker’s turkey, here’s wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving from FishTales.

This season, getting your lure to mimic a sand eel on the sandbar was an angler’s best bet for hooking a striped bass in the surf

NOVEMBER 24, 2009

No keeper for me since Saturday. On Sunday, however, I did get 8 short stripers in a split session (630am to 830am; 3pm to 5pm). I even caught a fluke and also a dog fish–aka sand shark–which I got on a double header with a 10-inch striper! Biggest fish I had was 22 inches. The fish were taken at Truck Beach/Napeague State Park—the scene of Saturday’s “keeper” crime, if you will—and west of White Sands. Virtually all, except the micro-bass, hit the red tube teaser. At daybreak, small fish were porpoising right out of the water and there were swirls in the wash. A few birds worked over the gentle surf. It didn’t last long.

This red tube teaser did most of the damage on stripers caught on the ocean beach in Napeague and Amagansett

Some quality fish came up both in the morning and in the afternoon on Truck Beach and near Napeague Lane. But Sam Doughty, who had 20 bass for the day, said not one of his was a keeper. Overall, however, the fishing was stupid good the entire weekend from Georgica Beach to Hither Hills with the epicenter being Amagansett. No showly blitzes. Sometimes a few birds working in the early hours. Mostly, however, sharpshooting wherever a patch of water looked fishy or the structure showed a cut in the bar. Bucktailers will be bucktailers and fish were caught on white and chartreuse. But the deadliest lure was the  A27 diamond jig with a green tube–esssentially serving as a TDD (teaser delivery device). Teaser tubes, I learned, made all the difference.

The fish were sometimes right in the wash and mostly just in back of the breakers in the trough beyond the sandbar.  S-l-o-o-w retrieves worked best with an occasional jerk of the lure off the bottom. The sand eels invasion continued unabated. Sunday morning the beach at Napeague was littered with them and it was very common to snag one or two on a retrieve along the bottom.

Sand eels like this one have inundated the sandbars of East Hampton and Montauk and served as the primary bait for stripers and bluefish this fall surfcasting season

Monday morning the weather turned. Overcast skies, a forecast of showers and winds out of the northeast. At first light, I made a last pre-Thanksgiving run on the beach. Gannets dove big time near White Sands. They moved in fairly  close—to the outer bar—but not close enough. I picked up one 12-inch striper at Napeague before quitting at 9am. Then it was up-island to reality, a birthday dinner with Tono and Le Nozzi di Figaro at the Met. Worse days, I have had.

Monday’s lightening round might have been my season ender (Tick tock!).  Future fish calls and the weather will determine that. In any case, I didn’t plan to return until after the holiday. So the question was, would the Fat Lady sing while I wolfed down Turkey and cranberry sauce?

Gobble Gobble.

Just when I thought I was done, a keeper bass pulled me back in

NOVEMBER 21, 2009

November sunset on the ocean beach at Napeaque

You can get just so much from a good thing

You can linger too long in your dreams

Say goodbye to the “Oldies But Goodies”

Cause the good ole days weren’t always good

And tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, keeping the faith

–Billy Joel

I’d been fishing on my own for two days, ever since Big Bob Wilsusen and my son Daniel left the beach following a lightening round of surfcasting on Thursday. I had a few small fish and but I was starting to worry that we had reached the end of the 2009 surfcasting season. Fish were being caught, but mostly rats. The fish were  still feeding on sand eels. No sign of big bait. Very few blues were caught.  On Friday, I  saw lots of short bass and only one keeper come up at Atlantic Ave. in the late afternoon. I had two short stripers myself, one right in front of Treasure Island Drive. The one at dusk,  on Truck Beach, was close to keeper-size: maybe 26-1/2 inches. My rough estimate was that for every 10 fish caught, nine were shorts and only one was a 28-inch or larger keeper. Anglers were dragging their lures slowly along the sandbars, sometimes dredging up skates and even small fluke. What was going on, I wondered?

Saturday morning, I searched from Truck Beach east of Napeague Lane all the way west to Georgia. I saw zilch. I stopped to cast a bit here and there, but I couldn’t raise a fish.  Things were dull as dirt. The weather was fine–near perfect, in fact. Water temperatures had cooled to somewhere around 57 degrees F.  A chilly NNW breeze kept the sky clear and plenty of sunshine raised air temperatures to the mid-50s by midday. A blazing orange sunrise at 645am competed for the natural beauty crown with a killer pink-and-gray sunset at 5pm the night before. It was a great day to be on the beach fishing, except for one important detail: where were the fish? I was beginning to think they had all moved west.

Who’s Zoomin’ Who?

At Atlantic Ave. around 7am,  one surfcaster leaving the beach volunteered: “You missed them. It’s all over now. At dawn, fish were jumping and lots of quality fish were taken off the beach.” A few minutes later, another angler offered a different view: “I’ve been here all morning and I have yet to see a fish of any sort caught.” At Harvey’s Tackle Shop, I relayed both stories and asked: “who was lying?” Said Sam Doughty: “they both were”. Too weird. I was starting to loose faith.  It seemed like my Saturday afternoon run was likely to be my last of the season. Perhaps the Napeague Lane Massacre of 11/12/09 was the season climax. Tick Tock. I thought I heard the Fat Lady clearing her throat in the wings.

Faith, hope and keeper bass: This teen-sized November striper fell to a green-feathered teaser in the wash at Napeague State Park

After lunch, I rode the beach east to Napeague State Park where at least 40 surfcasters were into a slow but steady bite of small fish, punctuated every now and then by a keeper bass. I joined in, throwing an A17 Diamond jig with a green tube followed by  a green-feathered teaser. I got one small bass. Then I remembered the slightly heavier, A27 diamond jig that Sam Doughty recommended I buy at Harvey’s Tackle Shop a few hours earlier.

Faith-Based Fishing

Two casts after tieing on that lure, I got a no-nonsense hit a mere 2o yards beyond the sandbar where I stood. My rod bent more than any time in the last two weeks. Line tore off my reel as my drag protested. It was fairly certain I had a quality fish on and it didn’t take long to beach it. My fish was a 31-inch fatty that had been munching on sand eels.

The bite died shortly thereafter and I left the beach before dark to prep for dinner. The bass was oven roasted in white wine, lemon and olive oil, perfumed with basil, thyme and capers. Tono contributed risotto with chicory and carrots. I lit a fire and cranked up some Puccini. Natalie baked a few chocolate fudge cookies for dessert and the night was complete. I was ready to rise early and take one more shot in the morning.

My faith was restored.

Beware the fate of those who ignore the fish call. And woe unto thee who forsake the teaser hook

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

November Sky at Napeague: Sam Doughty leans back on a sunset striper

Here is the message I picked up on my voice mail at 830am Wednesday morning.

“Hey Fred, you really need to get out to Amagansett, if you aren’t already here. Those fish are stacked up on the beach in front of your house and have been there since before daybreak. It’s about 730am now. Half or three-quarters of Montauk is there, if you want to get in the middle of all the fighting and yelling and screaming. The fish were there last night, too, a couple of 300 or 400 yards to the west of the Napeague Lane. There is an east wind driving bait up on the beach. I don’t know how much longer it will last. Worth a day trip at least. A couple of nice fish came up. Sam fished there last night. I had some smaller fish near Gurney’s.”

Harvey Bennett says he would drive a Toyota Prius--but he doesn't know where to mount the gun rack

That was from Harvey Bennett, proprietor of The Tackle Shop and self proclaimed naked fisherman. I once asked him for a photo and he told me all he had was one of himself fishing in the buff. Heck, I didn’t even know he fished. A good day for Harvey, who Vanity Fair described as the East end’s beloved insult king, is the opportunity to make the most outrageous statement possible to the most unsuspecting, innocent victim.  “I told one tree-hugger,” he proudly recalled,  “that I would be happy to trade in my Chevy pick-up for a hybrid Prius, once I figure out where to mount the gun rack.”

As it turns out, when Harvey is not verbally abusing a friend, customer or random stranger, he does fish. His latest You Tube Video promotion claimed that he caught 50 stripers with his buddy Sam Doughty on a recent afternoon. So his  heads up fish call was all the prompting I required. I put the word out to a few stalwarts that I would be heading east to Amagansett after dinner and I got two takers: my son Daniel and Big Bob Wilsusen.

Big Bob Wilsusen answered the fish call and was rewarded with this chunky teen size bass

We hit the beach at 645am Thursday morning and we didn’t have to travel far. There were already nine trucks in the Napeague Lane parking lot and an equal number on the beach to the west. This is where the action left off when storm Nor’Ida moved through last weekend, and it was where the action picked up again once the waters settled down early in the week.

We stepped into the water halfway between Napeague Lane and Treasure Island Drive. The tide was incoming and the pick was very slow. We threw the lure bag, but the offering of choice was a diamond jig with a green tube—the bigger and heavier the better for the distance required to cast it beyond the sandbar.

At 9am, Big Bob got a hit in the wash.  I was 100 yards down the beach but I could tell by the bend in his rod that he had a quality fish. The striper that came up was a fat and sassy 32-½ inch, teen-sized bass. It was stuffed, literally, to the gills with sand eels.

Not our best day: Daniel played hookey but got skunked and I'm shopping for a new rod (photo by Jack Yee)

That pretty much sealed the deal for our morning session. I then ran into a series of equipment snafus. I’ll spare you the details but suffice it to say my day was not improved when a 9 1/2-foot graphite rod broke in two on an ordinary cast. Unfortuately, it was a worse day for Daniel. His hookie-from-work escapade turned into a skunk session. Daniel hadn’t gotten into fish even once this season. And we were rapidly running out of season.

Sam Doughty makes catching quality keeper bass like this one seem like child's play

Bob filleted his fish and left the beach. Dan and I cast at a few other spots before he left for the LIRR and home. At 315pm, I headed back to the beach solo.  Near the Atlantic Ave. beach entrance, there was a flock of birds working so I humped out to the sandbar and began hurling towards them. Finally, a strike. I was hoping for a keeper bass but came up instead with a hyperactive bluefish. Considering my results to that point, I was thankful nonetheless. Then I moved along to the east where I encountered Harvey Bennett and his buddy Sam Doughty. Sam makes surf fishing–or more precisely, surf fish catching–look easy. He  was nailing stripers on nearly every cast. Harvey was fishing with a tiny rod and reel and wasn’t doing much worse. Their secret: rubber tube teasers tied a few inches above their diamond jigs. At one point, Sam pulled in two baby bass, a double header with one on the main lure and another on the teaser. “Put them in a line and you have a keeper,” Harvey quipped.

Sam took pity on me and showed me how to tie on a red tube teaser which he donated to my cause. I escaped total shame by  nailing a tiny striper in a diaper a few casts later. For a  sunset finale, I moved over to the beach entrance at Napeague Lane where I scored one more micro bass. Both fish were caught on the red teaser. Later, Harvey called to say he left a teaser rig for me at his shop. “Don’t forget to pick it up, you’ll need it in the morning.”

I made sure it was my last stop before home.

My only "keeper" of the day was this hyperactive bluefish