Spring For Big Squid?

Stewart Lester of Springs was readying lobster pots in his backyard last week and heard a fish hawk screaming. It told the lifelong bayman that at least one osprey had returned for the season, and that it was feeding. This, in turn, told him alewives had most likely also arrived. Bunkers (menhaden) would follow soon.

Mr. Lester said he planned to install his pound trap on the north side of Napeague and was preparing to cut new white-oak stakes with the help of some "young muscle." He concentrated on lobsters last season and didn't fish his trap.

The unseasonably warm winter could spell a better-than-normal spring squid run, he said, if things follow the pattern of 1982.

Warm Water

"They've had a good year on squid offshore this year. Hope they leave some for us," Mr. Lester said, referring to the winter dragger fleet.

Despite the recent cold snap, the fisherman said water temperatures were high for this time of year, about 40 degrees as opposed to the usual 34 to 36 degrees.

"It's got to be in the 30s for the water [column] to fold over so the bottom comes to the surface. It brings the plankton to the top, where they start blooming. If it doesn't fold over, the fish come closer to the beach."

Signs Of Action

That, he explained, is because nutrients from streams kick-start the food chain in shallow water, even if the same process is slow farther out - that is, in the area between the shallows and the warmer offshore water.

Nineteen eighty-two and '83 "were big squid years," he said. "The stuff was right on the beach in 15 to 25 feet of water," and absent between there and where the squid fed during the winter months.

The presence of trucks pulling trailored boats on the roads in March is a sign, not unlike Mr. Lester's fish hawk, that fish have begun to arrive, and that trap stakes are being sunk into bay bottom and their twine strung to catch the migrating bunker (sold as lobster bait), squid, and, later, striped bass and bluefish, all of which graze after smaller fish near shore.

Part of the bayman's prognostication is right on the money: Montauk draggermen report the best offshore squidding in some time.