4/9/12
It’s not official, but realistically, codfish catching is over. The occasional boat that goes
fishing these days is targeting ling and hoping to find a stray cod along with them. No
boats sailed on Sunday and the only boat that was out on Saturday was the Viking. It was
also out one day during the week as was one of the charterboats, but I haven’t heard any
reports from those trips which will give you an idea of how good they were.
The boatyards are starting to get busy, even more so than they were last year at this time,
spurred on by the warm winter and the belief (or hope) that things will heat up early this
season. Mackerel have wintered-over south of Long Island instead of down south of
Jersey, and there have been some reports of bluefin in with them, as well as some striped
bass when the schools got close enough inshore. That will probably mean a bunch of baby
mackerel (tinkers) in our area, which might (hopefully) mean a better than normal
showing of bluefins eating them (maybe?).
There have been some rat bass caught out of the surf already, and I expect to start seeing
some draggers off the beach any day now (but that probably won’t happen). Striped bass
season opens on next Sunday and if there were any charterboats codfishing I would
expect one of them to at least give it a try for some bass. We’ll see! Fluke season opens
up on May 1 and I would expect the fish to be here by then at least. Blackfish season
opens up on October 8, so there will be no spring fishing for them except commercially,
which doesn’t seem right to me.
As for local news, the Surf Lodge, the tourist nightspot that attracts all the nighttime
parking headaches on Fort Pond is for sale. Lenny’s on The Dock is being torn apart and
redone by new owners and the rumor is that it’s parking lot will no longer be available for
clients on the fishing boats. (Maybe next they will be not renting dockspace except for
nightclubbers who want to arrive by boat??). Marshal’s regular pump it yourself is
$4.30/gallon and diesel at Montauk Marine Basin is $4.45
I might have an occasional report, but don’t expect weekly reports until sometime in May
when things start to get more active.
Of course the fishing in Central America will still be hot through the spring and some of
the lodges that were booked up through the winter months are starting to have some
availability, so if the ling don’t interest you and you can’t wait until the fluke and stripers
show up, give it a thought and check it out at
www.tropicalfishing.com
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