Bonus Day – Tautog Taken Off Fisher’s

Bob and I headed out to East Hampton to close up the house, clear the gardens, and sadly, put the boat away for the winter. We woke up Saturday morning to cloudy skies, no wind, flat seas and a nice fall temperature of 55 degrees. We figured there would be no harm in taking the boat for a spin before we took care of “The List”. We headed east and on flat seas figured we could hit Montauk in 30 min. We pulled into Montauk Harbor to get some fuel and talk to the guy behind the counter. Word on the street was that the bass were still biting off the point. Guys were getting them on live herring that they would catch jigging. This sounded like a lot of work. I inquired about Blackfish aka Togs over by Shagwong. the burly man scoffed “ha, Shagwong was picked over weeks ago. If you want togs, you got to go to the east side of Fisher’s. You’ll see the boats.” I figured that since we just drove to Montauk on a whim and the sun was out, why the hell not head to Fisher’s. We picked up half a bushel of green crabs and headed dead north. After 30min we hit the Eastern shore of Fishers Island…we saw the boats. A rocky shoal about 25-30 deep flared south off of the island. A dozen boats were anchored in the area. everyone was there for Togs and everyone knew when someone caught a keeper because you could hear the hooting and hollering. We picked a conservative spot when we first approached. After 15 min we didn’t have much luck. I decided to move in closer to the shore and get on top of a rockier bottom. We pulled up tight into the pack and got a few harsh looks. Nothing you can do about that. We dropped anchor and after a few minutes Bob hooked up on a nice fish. Once on the deck it measured to 14 inches however it was pump. Too bad we had to throw it back. Another 15 minutes later, now on the back end of high tide Bob hooked up again and this time it was fat and 16 inches long. We had dinner. Eventually we lost the tide and everyone vacated the sweet spot. We checked out the north side of plum island on the way home. It was packed but everyone was catching shorties in a fast moving tide. We called it quits and headed back to the dock. On the most unlikely of days we traveled farther than we have ever traveled on the boat and most importantly, we brought home dinner!