A Reprieve From Wind, Finally

Waterfowl season is upon us.

Saturday will be the main season opener for most duck species — though not broadbilll, a major absence for a lot of us who hunt the offshoots of the main South Shore bays.

With temps in the 50s for most of this month it’s hard for me to get very excited about the prospects for waterfowling in November anymore. It seems like it’s really mid-December or almost Christmas before I start seeing ducks filling up the ponds or gathering in the bays in any real sizable groups these days.

Once upon a time, the start of the hunting season, and the days beforehand when duck blinds and decoys and boats were begging for preparations, were always tangled with the pull of the striped bass run on the sand just across the bay.

But it seems as though the fall run for us this year is more or less over with, affording plenty of time to prep for the hunting season.

If the wind ever let up around here we might have had a much better fall run than we had.

It has been a frustrating last month or so for South Fork fishermen. We were enjoying our best fall of albie fishing in three years and it seemed poised to turn into one of those years when the albies hang around until at least the start of November.

Then, someone turned on the fan. Gale after gale have strung together like a freight train of abuse.

Amid the gales – west, east, north, south and every combination – the albies vanished. The striped bass waves moved in and moved out, one after another with only brief stays off our shores then the next gale would come along and the fish would jump west. The last weeks of the fluke season were greatly dampened by the churned ocean. And the tuna fishing for us here on the eastern end of the island was hobbled for weeks, during which the yellowfins mostly moved out and the mid-sized bluefins pushed west from the waters off Block to the New York Bight, where they have been putting on a show for the run and gun crowd to say the least.

It looks like we may finally be getting a reprieve. Hopefully, the lull in the winds in the back end this week is just the start of a new atmospheric pattern that brings us some slicker days for running to blackfish and tuna.

The absence of bluefish from the waters around Long Island this fall is absolutely astounding, and really concerning.

There has essentially not been a bluefish caught within a few casts of shore in Montauk since early September. In September and October the giant tuna fishermen were going to Southwest Ledge to catch their baits.

There was no November run of bluefish along Long Island’s beaches at all. Not one. The baby weakfish made their break for it over the last couple weeks — usually that would mean the hordes of bluefish shoulda been hot on their tails chasing them into the surf zone. But nothing.

Bluefish have been largely absent (relative to their historic abundance) from the region for nearly a decade now. But it had seemed like they were sort of getting back on track last year and this year. Then, poof, they vanished about the same time the summer tourists did and nary a yelloweye has been seen since.

What accounts for this? I haven’t the slightest idea. A friend from the Mediterranean pointed out that bluefish, unlike striped bass, roam all over the oceans, from Mexico to Med, and that it’s possible they are just in a natural cycle that has taken the huge stock of them elsewhere — with warming seas and changing bait patterns a potential catalyst for a population shift.

This seems less likely than the age-old culprit of overfishing. With market prices for bluefish around $2 a pound in recent years, they have become a real target for the commercial fishing fleet that is definitely taking a hunk out of the spawning stock. (Unlike striped bass, you can just forget the idea that shore-based recreational fishermen are the problem.)

Whatever the reason, it’s a really concerning state of affairs. Bluefish were so much a part of the recreational fishing scene on Long Island during the years that striped bass were in deep decline; with that condition seemingly approaching again it’s a shame to not have something fill in the gaps.

Take advantage of the break in the wind, while you can and get some fishing in before hunting becomes the main attraction.

Catch ’em up. See you out there.