10/4-10/7: Mostly Gardiners

[Tuna]

I hadn't read some of the mid week reports, so I headed to the Point Thursday morning. Very slow - some blues and albies in the rips, but a lot of discolored water and no obvious structure to what bait was there. Saw Jeff Palmer out there who said that things had been bad since the blow at the end of the month. I cast a sinking line to the rocks at the lighthouse and picked up some small bass, then headed west.

Gardiners was jumpin that day, with pods of albies and blues. Had a pretty good day. Sometimes the fish were in less than 10 feet of water and, with sun and clear water, it was fun visual fishing (ssing strikes, seeing fish zoom by).

Friday, I got out earlier and shared a good early morning feed at Eastern Plains Point with Ted Shane. Lost several albies quick. Then got some. Again, very visual. Saw large pods of albies come up and go down quickly at Fort Pond Bay on both ends of the trip.

Best friend Bob McMahon and his good friend from college Dave Corbet (who now fishes out of NE) came out Friday night. We had planned to fish the weekend some months ago, but had not planned for another weekend blow. And blow it did. We tried spin fishing from shore at Montauk Saturday, but there was no clear water and I didn't have a clue how to put them on fish.

NOAA kept changing the Sunday forecast, and I was worried the weekend would be a total blowout. Woke up once at 2 am Sunday and heard the wind ripping and thought Dave would never see an LI albie this season. Up again at 4 am to get ready for an early trip, and it was only "breezy".

We headed against the wind to Gardiners and had shots at albies and blues from around 7 am until 2 pm at Eastern Plains Point (and some wind protected shallow water Tobacco Lot fish). Dave, only 4 or so years into salt water fishing, taught me some modern basics of spin fishing for albies (including turning me on to some lures, like Mega Bait). Got a lot of great video of Bob and Dave doubling on albies and sometimes blues (some of the blues were maybe 6-8 pounds, so we were playing "betcha its an albie" a lot and not always winning). Am looking forward to having Dave show me some spots up north next spring, so spent a fair amount of time just positioning the boat in exchange, but I got a few albies on the fly myself when I gave it a try.

I've fished with Bob for more than 40 years and always enjoy it, and I found I also liked fishing with Dave. He's hard core and with the bow spot a fair amount of the time did great with the albies on spinning. But Bob and I were sick of seeing him get most of the albies, so when we left early based on prior travel arrangements and found fish outside of Montauk Lake, Bob and I enjoyed taking the last 2 albies of the day.

Sunday was not as bad as it looked like it would be, and we had heard there had been a good (but somewhat bumpier) feed at Shagawong that day.

We got off the water around 3 pm and the winds picked up again. They were howling this morning (Monday) before I took off back for NJ.

Thanks for dinner Saturday, Dave, and for letting Bob use your super spin lures (which I plan to stock up on over the winter for my spin friends). Look forward to getting some NE bass with you in the spring.

PS: A friend of Dan's was going to call me, and I missed several cell calls in a row while on the water Thursday and Friday. If that was you, Leo, sorry about that, hope you got into fish.

[venture]

What's a Monday without a weekend report from Tuna, and then it came. Right on the money. Good goin Pete. Sounds like you pulled a few cats out of the hat during the blow. Your friends must feel very well taken care of with you behind the helm and going great lengths to put them into fish, and you did. To catch albies last weekend was a real challenge. I stayed back and didn't go out again. I was there on Wednesday and experienced poor fishing both inshore and offshore.

I'm off to Chatham MA tomorrow morning (weather permitting), to fish the Giant run off Nantucket. Will be there for the rest of the week. There was decent activity there before the blow, but it has been inconsistant this year. This season many fish over 800#s were recorded, along with several granders. There also are many who told tales of loosing really big fish. Sometimes a cold front gets'em going into a feeding frenzy. Hope I have a shot at one or two this year. It's a long winter.

Howie

[fmw]

I will ask the obvious question and hopefully it will spark a discussion: after all of this wind, is there going to be a regrouping of fish at the Point and will we see again this year any kind of regular blitzes, including the types of wild bass feeds that just seem to build and build?

As things were building nicely but were rudely interuppted, it seems like the bait is pretty disbursed and may not get back together in such a manner as to generate the great flyfishing.

On the other hand, I've read how great the wire line trollers are doing and maybe those fish will find the shoreline again soon. (Maybe they have already but even checking surfcasting reports elsewhere for Montauk shows dismal action).

[Tuna]

I tend toward the optimistic, but my guess is that, absent too many more big blows, there will be fish at the Point again. There's a lot of bait in the back bays still, and a fair number of fish. Just need a week of under 20 knots for the water to settle and the Point should show action again.

If there is another blow, there may not be time to regroup, as water temps must have dropped over the last few days. At least it looks like we have a few warm days coming.

[Tuna]

Howie:

Hope you have at least some shots at the giants, as I want to see another one of your offshore reports before the season is over. Your last great offshore report came at a tough time for us all, but I still soaked it in big time.

You all should see at least two more reports from me. I'm running out of days off, and the cold may make visions of Nov albies a fantasy (weather report this morning said Montauk was below freezing this morning). Some warm days coming up, so who knows, maybe it will last longer - looks like I'll be out Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week, so next report will be Sunday or Monday.

[dlc]

Peter, all I can say is 'you da man'! Thanks for one of my best days on the water ever. Like I said it's going to be a tough act to follow when you guys venture north next spring. We'll probably need 3 days to come close to duplicating the one day I had with you. Good luck for the remainder of the season and keep those reports coming as I (and probably many ohters) will be living vicariously through them for the next several weekends. Dave

[jpuris]

<font ="verdana">I was fishing (or should I say walking around) the Point on Sunday looking for a chance to get a cast off, saw no one catching anything and 25mph winds so I headed home. Saturday and Monday I checked out some of the South Shore beaches and also came up empty. The water was very brown from the waves. No bait either. As much as I like fishing the point from the beach or a boat I love fishing the open beach near my house and having the beach and fish to myself. I remember a day in October last year when I got to the beach at first light and there were hundreds of fish boiling 5 feet from shore..what a morning, just me and the fish. This year I have had the beach (what's left of it) to myself but no real blitzes since the Sunday before Memorial Day. The last two weekend have been total blowouts from the beach......I hope this weekend turns out to be the way it should in October....<font color ="blue">LOTS OF FISH.....PLEASE</font>.....Like Peter I tend towards the optimistic, the water is still prety warm, there is still lots of bait in the back bays, plus there has not been big bait yet so lets hope the wind stops for a bit and the fish come back in........Jason</font>

[peteD]

Just to add my $.02, I hit the point Monday. The wind was howling on the north side and the ocean was like a lake on the south side, but still no fish. Some blue fish at the mouth of Shinnecock at dusk, but that was it.

[joshr]

I was fishing on Sunday with my buddy and long time Reel-Timer Luyen Chou. Like Tuna, we found albies off Eastern Plains Pt of Gardiners. At about 9:30 am, we left Tuna there and made the run to Shagwong where there was a nice feed most of the day (middle Shag and off Gin Beach). VERY sloppy conditions there--extreme flyfishing if you will--but we got a few more albies there and broke one off. Lots of blues everywhere getting in the way. We did motor over to the south side and down all the way to Ditch Plain and saw nothing but dirty water...no signs of life at all.

Re prospects for rest of season: I suspect things will regroup as well...not sure I would have said that except that I heard that last Friday was fabulous around the Point (albeit north side not south). So it took 4-5 days to recover from that first blow, but recover it did...just in time for a 2nd blow. Calm southwesterlies the next few days should mellow things out. Hopefully the 'chovies will regroup around the Point. It's a good sign that there was so much bait from Montauk Harbor to Shagwong.