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The late, great Jim McLauchlen was a fixture on the beaches of Southampton and Water Mill for decades and a intrepid activist for beach access. He was the founder of the Southampton Association for Beach Access, or SABA, which lobbies on behalf of 4x4 owners. He died on October 15 at the age of 82.
The late, great Jim McLauchlen was a fixture on the beaches of Southampton and Water Mill for decades and a intrepid activist for beach access. He was the founder of the Southampton Association for Beach Access, or SABA, which lobbies on behalf of 4x4 owners. He died on October 15 at the age of 82.
The late, great Jim McLauchlen was a fixture on the beaches of Southampton and Water Mill for decades and a intrepid activist for beach access. He was the founder of the Southampton Association for Beach Access, or SABA, which lobbies on behalf of 4x4 owners. He died on October 15 at the age of 82.
Ryder Nadal, 7, with a nice striped bass caught from the beach near Georgica Pond. LEE NADAL
Teddy and Ted Prager with a fish of a lifetime: a 323 pound bigeye tuna. The father-son team caught the fish board their boat Revenant while fishing at Hudson Canyon and weighed it in at Oaklands Marina in Hampton Bays last month. DAN MATTEO
Aleksei Darvin with a beauty of a crappie caught on a trip to the Connecticut woods with his family this summer. TANYA PACHECO
Fishing has been very good on several fronts the last couple of weeks, as lots of striped bass are making their way through our waters now, tuna are still near shore, and the blackfish have started to get on the move as temps have (finally) started to cool off a bit.
Intrepid waterfowlers are beginning to shift their focus to grassing duck blinds, prepping boats and painting stool, but the tug of stripers on the beaches, or just beyond the surf, are still pulling at fishermen and those of us torn between the two.
My duck blind is still not grassed, my decoys are still in the attic with chipped paint, and my duck boat motor needs to be de-winterized. That is because the fishing on sand beaches the last five weeks or so has been outstanding — as should be expected this time of year.
There have been very few nights where stripers were not being caught somewhere between Moriches and Montauk, and on many nights they were being caught throughout that stretch. The last two weeks, the best bites have been in Southampton Village and off the sand in downtown Montauk and Hither Hills.
Most of the trophy-size bass that keep surf rats hungry for more have moved on now, but there are plenty of “keeper”-sized fish and a few teens and 20-pound class fish that can pull drag mixed in with the schoolies. And when the fishing is red hot, it’s hard to stay away, regardless of the size.
As discussed in my last column, things are not very rosy for stripers in the grand scheme of things these days. A decade of warm winters has decimated the spawning success of bass in the Chesapeake, and greed and political influence in the regulatory realm derailed the wise management suggestions from scientific advisors long ago, leaving us with only two strong but quickly depleting year-classes of fish in the population. We are lucky in that both of those bodies of fish tend to move through our waters at some point, so we still get the chance to catch them.
Even the 3-inch slot limit this year does not seem to have stalled the filling of winter freezers by striper fishermen this past month. It remains to be seen how the Addendum II discussions will go, but if we are going to protect stripers, someone needs to find a slot that is going to greatly reduce the number of “keepers” that anglers stumble upon.
Frankly, it should be sort of hard to catch a keeper, and if you manage to catch a dozen or so in a year, then bully for you. Considering the fact that health officials say eating them more than one a month isn’t such a great idea, that should be plenty for anyone.
Just beyond the striper schools — and sometimes right in among them — are the bluefin tuna. The resurgence of bluefin stocks in the last decade is hardly more apparent than in our local waters. While we don’t have the huge numbers that they do up off Cape Cod, we never really have. But the fact that you can go out and catch a bluefin weighing between 200 and 800 pounds on a small boat, within sight of land — and sometimes within a well-hit golf shot of land! — is testament to what good management can do.
I only hope that the managers who got us here are keeping tabs on how things are going — a lot of tuna are being caught and killed by anglers nowadays — and can maintain the upswing. If they can, the future of fishing in the Northeast is bright, despite the striped bass struggles.
The only real dark spot in this year’s fall run for me has been the absence of false albacore from our waters a lot of the season. The storms in mid-September seemed to push the bulk of the albie population up into Long Island Sound fairly early on, and they never really came out. A few good days in Gardiners Bay and a couple in Montauk was about the extent of it for even the most intrepid albie anglers. Hopefully, next year will be better.
I’ve spent a lot of time offshore in my lifetime, and I still managed to learn a few things this season:
A) Don’t ever hold off on running over to a lobster pot when you see one, even if there are no other boats on the horizon.
B) Even a fairly light northeast wind is not nice more than three miles offshore.
C) Don’t even go out looking for stripers or albies on your boat without a rod on board capable of at least giving you a chance to catch a big tuna if one comes along.
No further comment.
Catch ’em up. See you out there.
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