Swells at Sea; Tuna in Town

By Russell Drumm

Stuart Lester has reinvented himself yet again. "I think I've figured out what they use," he said on Sunday morning, hands thick from years of every kind of fishing under the sun, and greasy from fussing with his outboard.

Lester hails from Springs by way of Amagansett. Speaks Bonac. Yet there he was tied up to a floating dock at Inlet Seafood in Montauk, where he's been most of the summer, in the heart of the tight-lipped, competitive world of commercial rod-and-reel fishermen known as pinhookers.

He started out doing what baymen do: shellfishing, trap fishing, and haulseining with his father, Ted. Then, in the 1970s, when a bounty of lobsters was discovered 50 to 100 miles offshore, he bought a crew boat once used to ferry roughnecks out to the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, loaded it with lobster pots, and went fishing offshore. Later, he fished for lobsters inshore and worked two fish traps in Gardiner's Bay.

Last spring, Lester took part in an exhibition of traditional East Coast fishing methods and lifestyles sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Now, he's a pinhooker who said he was bailing them, Montauk Monster porgies that is, on the ocean side of Montauk, around Ditch Plain on Friday as the swells from Hurricane Frances grew and grew. "They were big, Bub. A couple of times I couldn't see the beach," he said, meaning from the deep valley between the waves. Once the chum pot, which had been calling to the porgies from below, started to be lifted from the bottom by the heave, the porgy bite stopped. It was time to head back to Montauk Harbor.

Rounding Montauk Point was a challenge, Lester said. Swells generated by Frances and moving unimpeded across the Atlantic were suddenly finding bottom by the point, and grew steep. "I gunned her once," he said. "I was surfing, bub."

The big surf seemed to have excited the fish. False albacore have appeared in Gardiner's Bay. "Falsies out the ying- yang. With this east wind and chop, they go nuts," was the way Harvey Bennett of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett put it.

Fluke fishing was good off Accabonac Harbor, he said, using as an example the 10-pound doormat he weighed on Saturday. It was caught by Virginia Mazzara of Deer Park, who had launched a small sharpie from Lazy Point. She nearly ran aground at Cartwright Shoal before catching the big fluke.

Ken Rafferty, a light-tackle and fly-fishing guide, said he saw falsies off Eastern Plains Point on Gardiner's Island and right outside the Montauk Harbor Inlet. Rafferty, who fishes from Three Mile Harbor most of the summer, will make his annual move to Montauk Harbor after Wednesday to focus on false albacore.

He said the hurricane swells had clouded the water in much of Gardiner's Bay, reason enough to bring his charters to Great and Little Gull Islands, where they found bass aplenty. The guide said he had been visiting the waters off Devon in the late afternoons where, despite the murk, schools of large bluefish had been "making up" just about every day.

The swell from Frances was so big that it was rounding Montauk Point and surging into Gardiner's Island, where, according to Bennett, a couple of fishermen/surfers were able to motor out to Cartwright Shoal on the south end of Gardiner's Island, anchor, ride waves, and catch a bass or two to boot.

Diamond Cove Marina in Montauk reported via Pete Sullivan and Denny Myers, aboard the Blazer, that Hydrographer's Canyon, a 70-mile steam from Montauk, is now home to schools of yellowfin tuna. The Blazer spent two days offshore over the weekend. Its crew was rewarded with nine yellowfin.