4/23/12
It’s early in the season, but the fish are here. Small stripers have been on the beach for more than two weeks and now they’re in the Rips as well. At least a couple of them were for the BLUEFIN IV when they did a little shake-down trip on Friday.
The LAZYBONES did a similar trip early in the week and caught a couple of fluke, but the season doesn’t open for them until the first of the month. The guys with commercial fluke licenses have been catching them for a while as well.
There are still some cod around even though hardly anybody has been fishing for them. The SEA WIFE and HURRY UP each made trips over to Block Island and were able to scratch out some fish along with ling. The HURRY UP also made a drop at Block Island’s Hooter Buoy for a handful of flounder even though the conditions weren’t the best with a hard tide running.
The DEC finally got out the chisel and put some regs in stone. Fluke open up on May 1 and runs until September 30 with a four fish limit at 19.5 inches. Seabass are fifteen fish at 13" running from June 15 to December 31 and porgies are twenty fish a 11" for private boats from May 1 to December 31 with a bonus of forty fish on party and head boats between September 1 and October 31.
Of course New York State giveth and then it taketh away. For years commercial boat owners in New York State were refunded the state sales tax that they paid on fuel purchases. That included charter and party boat operators. That has been going on at least since Perry Duryea was the Assembly Speaker. Now boats are getting letters from New York saying something along the lines of "OOPS, we were wrong to give you all that money. Please send it back"
For all the info you need about fishing in Montauk, check out www.montauksportfishing.com.
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. Give it a thought and check it out at www.tropicalfishing.com