There was a big uptick in the size of striped bass that hit the scales this week. What had been a relatively slow start to the bass fishing year, particularly considering the warm winter, caught up in a hurry, with a bunch of fish in the 30-to-40-pound range and a handful over 50 pounds that fell to boat and surf anglers alike.
The biggest as of Monday was the 56-pounder Dave Kohlus put one of his charters onto, and a 50-pounder was taken on a clam belly off the beach in Napeague on Monday morning. With the porgy season now open we can expect to start seeing the charter boats in Montauk put more and more slobs on the scale (even though I think they should be taking a picture of the biggies and throwing them back and keeping the smaller ones for the dinner table).
For beach fishermen, the South Side of Montauk and the bay beaches in the Peconics have been the hot spots. The dark and early morning tides have been the best. Eric Ernst snuck up under the Light one night and got a jumbo at the end of the flood.
Fluke fishing is sputtering along but producing enough fish over the 20.5-inch minimum size to keep most anglers happy. The funny thing is there don’t really seem to be that many small fish around this year. The Montauk boats are finding a higher ratio of shorts to keepers, but nothing like last year, when the minimum was an inch less. Back to the west, in Shelter Island Sound and off the North Shore, most fishermen are reporting about a one-to-one ratio of keepers and shorts. Most trips are producing only one or two keepers per man, though, so the fishing is anything but red hot.
Weakfish are here but not in any great numbers really, save for two red-hot bites last week. On Sunday evening there was a shot of big weakfish, 14-to-16-pounders, at one of the locals-only beaches in North Sea. On Friday I heard the same thing happened at the mouth of the Peconic River, where big schools of bunker have been hanging around for weeks getting mauled by the bluefish. Boats working the South Race by Robins Island and the deep holes off Roses Grove have been picking up a few nice weakfish in the deep holes, too, and a few have come out of Moriches Bay, but I haven’t heard of any that come close to what the guys on the beach have gotten. The big weakies are probably just about on their spawn and likely will disappear for a week or so before moving back into the bays.
Fluke fishing continued to struggle, though there have been enough keepers and big fish to at least keep people on the hook. The party boats in Montauk are diligently working the South Side and seem to be getting a keeper or two for each person on most trips, with the pool fish usually in the neighborhood of 6 or 7 pounds.
Porgy season opened this weekend and the anglers who love the voracious saltwater panfish were not disappointed. Whoops and hollers echoed across Little Peconic Bay from the boats anchored up over chum pots off Noyac on Saturday and Sunday as monster porgies swung into their buckets. Lots of the porgies that a friend and I caught on Sunday topped 3 pounds—filleting size—and several pushed above the 4-pound mark. I even heard that a boat off Greenport landed one that weighed 7 pounds, which is an absolutely giant porgy—possibly a state record.
Speaking of records, an angler on the Viking Fleet might have set the world record for a bergall aboard a two-day offshore trip last week. The current record bergall—it’s a member of the wrasse family, sometimes called cunners, and rarely targeted by most anglers—is just 2 pounds 3 ounces. Shawn Dornblaster put a 2-pound-8-ouncer on ice aboard the Viking Starship.
There’s still some flounders to be had. Last day of the season is Friday, so get your flounder sandwiches in now.
Catch ’em up folks. See you out there.