Had quiet the roller coaster of a week. After pushing the start of the trip back a day because of some stuff at work we headed out on Wednesday night.
Day 1: Thursday, Oct 16th
Thursday was going to be ‘recon’. We slept in a bit after getting in around midnight the night before. After loading up the truck with waders and the surf casting rods we headed east to Montauk. I knew the drill, check the town beaches, head east to ditch, circle around the point and look down to the north bar from the car, check camp hero cliffs, if nothing drive down to north bar; lather, rinse, repeat. We were lucky, when we hit the camp hero cliffs at 9:15am the fish were blitzing and looked to be moving west. It looked like the blitz had been going on for a while and guys were stacked up in front of the frothing water. I made the call to drive down the dirt path and hit ‘the sewer pipe’. I figured we would have time to gear up and get a few cast in the water before the fish arrived. by the time we got our waders on, belted up, and rods out guys were starting to head out. we got the the beach, fired some casts into the water and gave the equipment a shake down. After a few casts i started pushing east towards the activity. As i rounded the point i could see it had ended. some guys had keepers on the beach. I grabbed Matt and told him it was time to rinse lather and repeat. Fish didn’t head west. Just our luck they wrapped around to ‘Scott’s Hole’ just east of ‘North Bar’. We could see them from the road. We spead down the dirt access road blowing over the pothole laden path and jogged over. We didn’t push far enough. At the first site of some splashing we fired metal lores into the water. Off to our right we could see the chaos. Turns out I was the most courteous man in Montauk that day and my punishment was a cheese burger for dinner. Those that mugged the original crew were rewarded with bass; shit, by the time they got mugged they were dragging dinner up the beach by the gills and didn’t care. Lesson learned: find the bass, go to the bass, cast at the bass. “One-More-Cast” Matty hooked up to a shorty bass that was a fat 26 inches. Had to send him back along with the bluefish that was most likely responsible for the initial distracting splash. On the way out we ran across “buck-Tail-Billy” who had gotten to the scene early and had a nice keeper. All the action died out and we still had an afternoon ahead of us. we picked up some sandwiches, Herb’s Fried Chicken and green crabs (for the Togs) on our way out of town.
Recon north of Plum Island Continued after lunch, as did our PETA approved fishing. usually you anchor up on a rock pile for togs but this was recon and we didn’t know where to do. so after resetting the anchor a few times i figured, WTF lets just drift and we will find where the togs are. This kinda worked and as we passed over some structure we would get hit then go it again. all we got where shorts but we learned and after all it was a con day. we headed home at sunset ‘happy’ we weren’t burdened with cleaning fish. we then spent the next hour finding a restaurant that was open for dinner…
hooklineandskillet 