{"id":1114,"date":"2010-10-10T07:12:58","date_gmt":"2010-10-10T14:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/?p=1114"},"modified":"2010-10-14T07:25:51","modified_gmt":"2010-10-14T14:25:51","slug":"columbus-day-weekend-stripers-on-the-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/?p=1114","title":{"rendered":"Columbus Day Weekend: Stripers on the Rocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

The boulder fields of Montauk were hot hot hot with blitzes<\/h3>\n

October 10, 2010<\/span><\/h3>\n

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Amagansett Sunset: Skunked on the sandy beaches<\/p><\/div>\n

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. \u00a0I asked an observer standing nearby how long the fish were there and he said with a straight face: <\/span>“about two weeks”. I had questioned the hour, but his answer was more to the point. \u00a0The bite had been strong since the last week in September and almost exclusively concentrated on Montauk’s south side.<\/span><\/p>\n

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I heard \u00a0rumors of fish on the sandy beaches of Amagnasett where Harvey B. and his trusty sidekick Sam D. were keeping the waters honest.<\/span> 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\u2019s Wild Card victory over the Twins the night before.<\/p>\n

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Sam D. with a 31-inch keeper bass at Napeague<\/p><\/div>\n

I didn’t linger on the beach but continued east to rendezvous with with\u00a0Billy S. and\u00a0Big Bob W. aboard Bob\u2019s boat the Reel Attitude<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Whoa. What\u2019s that? Did I just say boat? Indeed. \u00a0With some extraordinary weather at hand\u00a0I couldn\u2019t resist the invitation to see and experience my favorite fishing beaches looking in<\/em> instead of out<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n

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The mosquito fleet surround a bass blitz in Turtle Cove<\/p><\/div>\n

We started chasing birds and bluefish off Shagwong Point, rocking and rolling to a decent west northwest wind.\u00a0 It was nothing the Reel Attitude<\/strong><\/em> couldn\u2019t handle, thanks primarily to Big Bob. He is a superb helmsman focused\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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Helmsman Big Bob: "no life threatening conditions"<\/p><\/div>\n

First I made Bob promise me there would would no \u201clife threating conditions\u201d. That done, the Reel Attitude<\/strong><\/em> rounded the Point with ease and\u00a0immediately joined the mosquito fleet\u00a0surrounding blitzing fish at Turtle Cove. It used to be that\u00a0squawking birds were the\u00a0sure way to know where to fish.\u00a0 Now, we just follow the flycasiting charters boats. \u00a0On this holiday weekend morning, the fleet\u00a0literally 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. \u00a0These fish were finicky feeders who were up and down, here than there, and not quick to take most offerings. \u00a0They 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.<\/p>\n

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Billy S. nailed a 28-inch keeper aboard the Reel Attitude<\/p><\/div>\n

It was just past high tide but the fish were blitzing as if tide didn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 Our challenge was to find a place to cast to these fish. Instead of competing, we decided to leave the fleet and find our own fish.\u00a0 \u201cDriftwood Cove to the west,\u201d I suggested, based on some sage advice offered by Sam D.\u00a0\u00a0Once there, were saw action developing at Caswell\u2019s so Bob pointed took us one more cove to the west. \u00a0That\u2019s where Billy S. got his keeper: \u00a0A frisky 28-inch bass that fell to\u00a0 bucktail adorned with red and white pork rind.\u00a0 For\u00a0 another hour, we jockeyed in and out among the fleet\u2014they found us and our fish soon enough. I envied as the fish were more times than not too close to the beach for us to reach.\u00a0 As a surfcaster who usually laments the fish being too far out to reach, I suffered just punishment for going “boating”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Bob took us in before the weather changed.\u00a0 The wind was stiff from the north and we took a bone jarring hold-onto-your-hat ride home.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But the bite, the holiday and the weather drew a huge crowd to the rocks in Brown\u2019s and Turtle Cove.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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Questioning the sanity of fishing in a boulder field<\/p><\/div>\n

I dialed up John P. who was day tripping in East Hampton and urged him to join me in Montauk with his gear.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 By 4 pm, I had John wading into the boulder field of King\u2019s, just west of the Sewer Pipe cove.\u00a0 I could see from John’s knitted brow that he was questioning the sanity of this sortie. I can’t say I blamed him.<\/p>\n

No sooner did we find some promising rocks to perch upon\u2014right in front of the mammoth boulder known as \u201cThe Refrigerator\u201d–the fish vanished from our range and resurfaced at Brown\u2019s a quarter mile east.\u00a0 They may as well have been in Portugal.\u00a0 But we waited. Patiently. For almost an hour. Finally, we were rewarded. The pod of fish from Brown\u2019s made its way to us. Meanwhile, another huge pod of pounding, feeding bass, converged from deeper water to the west.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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Picked from a blitz; <\/span>John P.’s first keeper from the surf<\/span><\/p>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

It was 530pm and our cell phones were ringing off the hook. John and I were due for dinner a half hour ago.\u00a0 As we ascended the bluff, down came Mellie K. of Georgica. \u201cStory of my life, she said. \u201cA day late and a dollar\u2026\u201d 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The boulder fields of Montauk were hot hot hot with blitzes October 10, 2010 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. \u00a0I asked an observer standing nearby how long the fish were there and he said with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1114"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1153,"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions\/1153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}