Outdoors

After a mixed bag of a season, I happily climbed aboard the Elizabeth II, a charter boat out of the Montauk Marine Basin, for a trip for cod and bass, both of which I latched into within minutes.

About 25 years ago, I recall jumping aboard the Viking Starship for the five-hour ride to Nomans (both the island and the area near Cuttyhunk) to target blackfish. Those trips were extremely popular, and one could retain 10 fish over 14 inches in length. Most of the time, the fishing was off-the-charts good.

The bay scallop season in waters under the East Hampton Town Trustees’ jurisdiction will open on Sunday at sunrise. Residents holding a town shellfish permit can continue to harvest them until sunset on March 31.

Chris Miller at Westlake Marina in Montauk confirmed that the fishing has been good on several fronts. “The bass fishing is holding up,” he said. “Sea bass too have been cooperating, but many are focused on blackfish, which has been very good since the season opened two weeks ago.”

"The blackfish bite has been very solid," said Ken Morse at Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor. "Lots of small fish, but many are still catching their limits." Surfcasters along the ocean beaches are finding action too.

Bird populations have declined steeply over the last 50 years, but the North American Bird Conservation Initiative's "State of the Birds 2022" report, published in early October, balanced the gloom with some success stories and offered strategies for future action which would "bring birds back."

While the fishing for striped bass has been strong in Montauk, it was out of my reach, so I decided to take advantage of the sunny and windless conditions on Saturday morning for the opening of blackfish season in waters outside Long Island Sound.

Our original 13-day vacation had already been cut short, then I tested positive for Covid. Hello to quarantine at home, which was still 420 miles away. For those not in quarantine, the fishing scene bounced back quite nicely after nearly a week of northeasterly wind and rain.

First light in Sag Harbor during autumn and the place belongs to the fish crows. They show up all at once, 100 landing in the big tree at M&T bank. As the day brightens, they spread out across the village into smaller groups. For a bird whose diet ranges from piping plover eggs to candy bars, Sag Harbor is a perfect foraging ground.

The popularity of fly-fishing exploded in Quebec when the movie “A River Runs Through It,” starring Brad Pitt, was released in 1992.

The oysters I received 16 months ago, which barely filled a half-pint container at that point, had grown by Sept. 21 to over five inches in length in many cases. After cleaning, culling, and sorting, I had well over a bushel basket of tasty bivalves.

For those lovers of crab, it’s not too late to catch some. Good quantities can still be had over the next few weeks in various creeks, coves, and harbors, before they burrow in the mud and sand for their winter slumber.

A large group of tree swallows is called a gulp, which proves ornithologists are not without humor. Before the leaves change, gulps of swallows crowd our beaches. At Mecox Inlet, Sagaponack Pond, and the dunes that circle Napeague Harbor, hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of tree swallows collect.

There are plenty of bluefish by Jessup’s Neck, porgy fishing is solid in many areas, including the east side of Gardiner’s Island. Sea bass too, are mixed in the catch in the deeper water. Farther offshore, tuna — bigeye, bluefin, and yellowfin — remain plentiful, and at the Cartwright grounds south of Montauk, as well as the area near the Block Island windmills, fluke fishing has been good of late.

American oystercatchers, which congregate in the marshes of our barrier beaches before flying south, are about the size of crows, and stout, with heavy white bellies, chocolate-colored wings, and pale pinkish legs. They wear a black executioner’s hood and have a long blood-orange oyster knife of a bill and yellow eyes circled by red eye rings.

“Plenty of action around,” Sebastian Gorgone of Mrs. Sam's Bait and Tackle in East Hampton said of the local fishing scene. “You name it, you can probably catch it.”

There is no vaccine to help prevent Lyme disease, which is transmitted through the bite of an infected deer tick, but that may soon change. In early August, the drug company Pfizer announced that it was seeking 6,000 people ages 5 and older to enroll in its phase 3 trial for a new Lyme vaccine. Separately, there's work underway using MRNA vaccine technology to make bites quickly itchy and red, so that they are easily noticed and the ticks can be removed before the transmit disease.

Lucky enough to once again secure media credentials to cover the U.S. Open tennis tournament, I needed to do a bit of fishing myself to see who is really hooked on fishing.

“Lots of weakfish are around, plus there are porgies, blowfish, fluke, sea bass, snappers, kingfish, and even some black drum being caught,” reports Sebastian Gorgone of Mrs. Sam’s Tackle in East Hampton.

It's news that neither a commercial bayman nor those who enjoy bay scallops wanted to hear: For the fourth summer in a row, there has been a significant die-off of mature bay scallops in local waters.

For boat owners, the fact that diesel has dipped below $6 a gallon is welcome news, even if it's still expensive. As any owner of a power boat knows, fuel is just one part (actually a very small part) of the overall expense of the craft. Other expenditures like dockage, insurance, maintenance, and other factors, significantly overshadow the bill at the fuel dock.

Despite the confusion and tragedy of American life in 2022, they somehow return each spring; like flying foil-wrapped gifts come to life. And now, as early as this week, the males will depart from our area to begin their largely daytime migrations south. This is one of the most entertaining weeks to “feeder watch,” as they defend their last sips.

Despite the excessive-heat warning from the National Weather Service, our intended quarry was a species that’s more recognizably caught in the bone-chilling winds and cold of winter: the iconic codfish.

“The fluke bite has really picked up over the past week or so,” Paul Apostolides said. “Nice fish up to 10 pounds have been taken.”

Fishermen can be a rather superstitious lot. Many have unusual habits or a routine that is indelibly ingrained based on past history — sometimes on fact but more likely fiction.

Lobsters grow by molting. It's basically a process in which they struggle out of their old shells while simultaneously absorbing water which expands their body size. Marine scientists estimate that molting occurs about 25 times in the first five to seven years of a lobster's life. Once shedding their old shells, lobsters put on the feed bag in a big way.

There’s good and not-so-good news for commercial and recreational shellfishermen in the updated rules governing shellfish-season openings and closures in East Hampton Town waters.

At the culmination of the popular Montauk Mercury Grand Slam Fishing Tournament, Capt. Skip Rudolph, a third-generation fisherman who has made his living on the water for decades, will be celebrated as the Montauk Fishing Legend of the Year.

Least terns are properly named, they’re our smallest tern, and thin. They slice through the air, buoyant and bouncy, on clipped wingbeats, patrolling the waters below. They’re very vocal. Their call is high-pitched and squeaky, with a sharp grating quality. Learn it, and you will often hear them before you see them.

While it is less than a 15-minute drive from the hustle and bustle of East Hampton's Main Street in July, Cedar Point County Park in East Hampton's Northwest Woods feels a world away, which makes it both special and surprising. This year, Doug and Lee Biviano, who also operate concessions at the Fire Island National Seashore, have reopened the camp store and brought glamping back to the park.