Last Montauk Sportfishing report of 2008

[Capt_Gene_Kelly]

WADERS DIVISION
1st Place: Willy Young - 52.12 lbs
2nd Place: Mark Foschi - 42.38 lbs
3rd Place: Gary “Toad” Stephens - 38.70 lbs
LADY’S DIVISION
1st Place: Loretta Sears - 18.08 lbs
2nd Place: Loretta Sears - 17.92 lbs
3rd Place: Cheryl Lackner - 15:84 lbs
WETSUIT DIVISION
1st Place: Fred Kalkstein - 41.62 lbs
2nd Place Mike Milano - 36.86 lbs
2nd Place: Brian Ritter - 40.94 lbs
YOUTH’S DIVISION
1st Place: Taylor Harned - 37.12 lbs
2nd Place: Ben McCarron - 25:34 lbs
3rd Place: Jonathan Pharaoh - 20.58 lbs
KID’S DIVISION
1st Place: Dylan Linick - 12.50 lbs
2nd Place James Kim - 12.14 lbs
3rd Place Griffin Kim - 11.86 lbs

[Capt_Gene_Kelly]

Somehow this got left out
12/17/08

It’s all over but the shouting, and that’s getting kind of faint.

The bass season ended Monday, but in reality it’s been over for a couple of weeks. I spoke to a captain who made his last
trip on Sunday and they never caught a herring or bass. The blackfish season ends on Saturday, but it’s still going strong,
with the couple of boats doing it coming back with great mixed bags of blacks, seabass and cod, fishing south of Block
Island.

There’re not many boats left in the water, and most of them will be getting hauled soon. The CAPT MARK will be in
over the winter for you diehards, taking both charters and sailing on a per person basis throughout the winter, and the
VIKING will be sailing select days through December and then starting up with cod trips the end of January.

I went to the fishery meeting held at Gurney’s last week (at least the fluke portion), and it looks like the fluke regs will be
a little tighter next season. The New York delegation wanted to have a uniform set of regs throughout all the states, but
that got shot down. For it to pass all the other states would have had to vote to tighten their regs in order to loosen ours,
and that wasn’t going to happen.

This past season was kind of a mixed bag. The inshore fishing was better than expected. Stripers never slowed down
once it got started in mid May. The fall was better than last year, but the herring run was nothing to write home about.
They were here and you could catch medium sized bass using them. But you could do just as well jigging the ‘chutes.
The fluke were a big surprise. I don’t know anybody who thought we’d have the amount of keepers that we had and
there were tons of shorts available. It took a while to get going, but once it did it was fine.

Offshore, the shark fishing was OK, but the tuna fishing was a disaster. For a while there were some school bluefins
southeast of the island, but with a two fish per boat limit, not many guys were chasing them, except for a little early
trolling before going sharking. But with the fuel prices and good sharking close by, the run to them didn’t make too much
sense. And the canyon? Forget it. You had to be a real masochist to go out there, although some boats had occasional
good trips, thanks to the marlin.

I was curious as to what would happen to the CRICKET after Frank Mundus died. Now I know. It was hauled out at
Uhleins’s and I figured it would die there, but I was wrong. It’s been taken back to Plainview to be auctioned off. It
opened up for bids on January 14 and run until February 4, with a minimum bid of $25000. For more info you can go to
http://www.maltzauctions.com.