9/8/08

Half a hurricane HANNA sure messed up the weekend, but it wasn’t the storm as much as the timing of the forecast.
When I saw that it was supposed to hit land around 2:00 am Friday down in the Carolinas, I figured there was no way it
would get to us by Saturday morning, and for a change I was right. In fact the conditions were great all day Saturday
except for a brief downpour around 3:00 pm. But, hardly anybody sailed. Then the question was how would it affect the
fishing after it passed? That was answered by the few boats that fished Sunday morning that came back with fine catches
of stripers. The next question is how did it affect the offshore fishing, and we won’t know that for a couple of days.
However, it can’t really hurt it that much since it’s been pretty poor all summer.

It brought back memories of the 80’s when we were tuna fishing on the West Bank all summer. There was a small
hurricane heading our way that was supposed to pass offshore of us in the afternoon. But the fishing had been so good
that we all figured we’d get out in the morning, catch our load and be back at the dock before it even got close. Wrong!
The tuna didn’t bite that day and we all got our ass kicked coming home.

The closing of the fluke season gave a bunch of the head boat guys a bit of a vacation, with hardly any of them sailing all
week. There is only so much of a demand for porgies and seabass. They are going to have to get out their diamond jigs
and get going on the blues and bass.


From LAZYBONES:
This will be short and sweet as we fished both trips for sea bass and porgies all week. We will continue to fish for these
species and then will switch to striped bass and blues starting Sat. Sept. 13th. Trips will be from 8 A.M. till
12 and then from 1 P.M. till 5 everyday until Dec. 15th. Call for reservations.

Had some nice size porgies up to 3 lbs. and sea bass up to 4 1/4 lbs. There was plenty of action as there were some small
sea bass and porgies mixed in. We even managed to get some nice size fluke up to 5 lbs. which of course we threw back.
Pretty much everybody came off the boat with a nice mixed bag of fish.

If you would like to get these reports sent to you directly, drop me a line at captgene@montauksportfishing.com and I’ll
put you on the list.

Capt Gene Kelly - Montauk Sportfishing