FishTales

A report from the waters at Shagwong Reef.

Big Bob battles a brawny bluefish on Shagwong Reef.

Saturday 3:30-4:30 pm 9/11/10.  Shortly after my phone died while speaking to you on Saturday afternoon, I was cruising the waters around Shagwong with my son Sean and his friend Jonathan, a fishing debutante from Annapolis MD, when we witnessed quite a display of nature.  It started with a small group of birds working over some bluefish.  We hurried to the spot and picked off one small blue.  Shortly after that at about 3:30, we saw a larger group of birds near the Shagwong buoy to our north.  While we traveled in that direction, more and more birds arrived until birds covered the sky from the Shagwong buoy south to Shagwong point and west to the buoy marking the mouth of Montauk harbor.  The dinner bell sounded and a million, three to four pound bluefish starting feeding on either bay anchovies or baby spearing.  It was hard to tell based on the regurgitated remains that covered the deck of my boat.

Within five minutes, we had 6 blues landed and in the fish box.  We also had one broken reel and one snapped line from my new light tackle rod.  The deck was covered with blood, fish guts and semi-digested bait fish.  Some of the blood was mine as I sliced my finger on fire wire line trying to help my charges pull their fish into the boat.  With two rods down we switched to boat poles that had been set up with leaders and quickly added small diamond jigs. We dropped lines to the bottom and just reeled straight up and caught a fish on every retrieval.

With 8 fish already in the box, we just shook the new catches off the line and went back down. I kept thinking of one of your basic rules: never leave the fish.  But by this time a reel on one the new boat poles had also jammed.  I was also running low on fuel and day, so we headed into Star Island Marina for gas and filleted our fish.  And then into the setting sun.

It was one of the largest concentrations of fish I have ever seen.  If this is a foreshadowing of the season to come it will be one for the ages.  I can ony hope that the bass will be as plentiful.

Talk to you soon.