FishTales

The boulder fields of Montauk were hot hot hot with blitzes

October 10, 2010

Amagansett Sunset: Skunked on the sandy beaches

Walking to the edge of the bluff at Camp Hero shortly after daybreak, I spotted a thick pod of boiling stripers in the surf below.  I asked an observer standing nearby how long the fish were there and he said with a straight face: “about two weeks”. I had questioned the hour, but his answer was more to the point.  The bite had been strong since the last week in September and almost exclusively concentrated on Montauk’s south side.

I heard  rumors of fish on the sandy beaches of Amagnasett where Harvey B. and his trusty sidekick Sam D. were keeping the waters honest. Billy S. and I roamed the ocean beaches from Indian Wells to Ditch Plains without seeing a sign of life. Nonetheless, I caught Sam beaching a healthy 31-inch fish early Sunday morning at Napeague where he had been casting since just after the last pitch of the Yankee’s Wild Card victory over the Twins the night before.

I didn’t linger on the beach but continued east to rendezvous with with Billy S. and Big Bob W. aboard Bob’s boat the Reel Attitude.

Whoa. What’s that? Did I just say boat? Indeed.  With some extraordinary weather at hand I couldn’t resist the invitation to see and experience my favorite fishing beaches looking in instead of out. Maybe, I thought, we’d get into the fish that were all too often out of beach range, corralled among the flotilla of fishermen asea.

We started chasing birds and bluefish off Shagwong Point, rocking and rolling to a decent west northwest wind.  It was nothing the Reel Attitude couldn’t handle, thanks primarily to Big Bob. He is a superb helmsman focused  like a laser on safety and he got us into the fish numerous times. I brought two decent sized blues to the boat, one on my flyrod and another on a spinning outfit rigged with a small bucktail. Bob and Billy had equally good luck and the live well was soon stocked with a half dozen choppers. It was time to find some bass off Montauk Point.

First I made Bob promise me there would would no “life threating conditions”. That done, the Reel Attitude rounded the Point with ease and immediately joined the mosquito fleet surrounding blitzing fish at Turtle Cove. It used to be that squawking birds were the sure way to know where to fish.  Now, we just follow the flycasiting charters boats.  On this holiday weekend morning, the fleet literally outnumbered fisherman on the shore. Nose in, stern out, drifting sideways, and what have you, it was a skillful ballet of boatsmanship to find a position to cast to the white water blitzes of frenzied striped bass.  These fish were finicky feeders who were up and down, here than there, and not quick to take most offerings.  They were also pretty tight to the beach. We edged our way into the fray at Turtle Cove and the Sewer Pipe, Bob carefully maneuvering his 21-footer as close to shore as he dared without us turinging into a surfboard.

Bob took us in before the weather changed.  The wind was stiff from the north and we took a bone jarring hold-onto-your-hat ride home.  I turned right around in my truck and headed back to Montauk with my waders and surfrod. The fish were still there, though now they were out among the boats, beyond beach casting range.  But the bite, the holiday and the weather drew a huge crowd to the rocks in Brown’s and Turtle Cove.  The Camp Hero parking lot needed a valet and Turtle Cove was a ridiculous traffic jam of illegally parked SUVs. But there were blitzing fish everywhere.

I dialed up John P. who was day tripping in East Hampton and urged him to join me in Montauk with his gear.  The fish wouldn’t be easy to catch but as an infrequent fall visitor, who more often has a 5-iron in his hand rather than a surfrod, it was time that John got religion.  By 4 pm, I had John wading into the boulder field of King’s, just west of the Sewer Pipe cove.  I could see from John’s knitted brow that he was questioning the sanity of this sortie. I can’t say I blamed him.

No sooner did we find some promising rocks to perch upon—right in front of the mammoth boulder known as “The Refrigerator”–the fish vanished from our range and resurfaced at Brown’s a quarter mile east.  They may as well have been in Portugal.  But we waited. Patiently. For almost an hour. Finally, we were rewarded. The pod of fish from Brown’s made its way to us. Meanwhile, another huge pod of pounding, feeding bass, converged from deeper water to the west.  These two schools collided directly in front of us in a spectacular feeding frenzy that washed in and out of our range with the now turning tide and mounting swells.

Waves wrinkled and blackened with feeding fish heaved towards us. John hooked a quality fish on a bucktail, but it dropped off just at his boots.  By now, we were surrounded by other casters, including one who swam to a rock directly in front of me. That meant that unless the fish came in between me and this Yahoo, I was cut off. But John managed one more striper and it turned out to be a legal beagle: 28 inches on the nose.

It was 530pm and our cell phones were ringing off the hook. John and I were due for dinner a half hour ago.  As we ascended the bluff, down came Mellie K. of Georgica. “Story of my life, she said. “A day late and a dollar…” she stopped in mid sentence when she saw the mayhem that continued all along the beach below. John and I departed with the bite still building toward crescendo. There was plenty left for Mel.

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