Irony can be a bitter pill to swallow at times. A perfect example came about last week as my boat was pulled from the water for the season. 

As luck or fate would have it, as soon as it was hauled out, the weather decided to turn nice. Like a simple light switch being turned off, the steady windy weather that’s been a constant over the past few months finally ceased. The calmness lasted for several days. The weather gods had finally listened, but sadly, at the wrong time for me. 

Just about anyone you talk to around various docks, tackle shops, and marinas would agree that this fall season produced some of the windiest weather witnessed in many years. It rarely stopped blowing.

So, it hurt me a bit to see a few boats still plying the waters in front of my house for bay scallops, their owners enjoying the chilly yet docile, placid conditions. I was sad that I had not kept my boat in the water just a little bit longer. 

But it was too late. Covered in a mass of shrunken white heavy plastic, my boat is now solidly entombed while resting on cement blocks on terra firma. And it will remain in its very solemn position until the end of March, when it will be unwrapped from its deep sleep. 

I can’t complain, though. I put over 120 hours on my engine this year. By any account, she deserves some rest.

However, for those lucky enough to still have their boats in the drink, the fishing was productive during those rare calm days on everything from blackfish to porgies to codfish to black sea bass. 

But the greatest surprise, by all accounts, has been a sudden, strong showing of haddock. A close cousin of codfish, haddock are usually found north of Cape Cod in colder waters. Nobody in our local environs directly targets them, as they are just not around. 

Back in 1981, I caught one on a long-distance trip to Georges Bank in the pursuit of cod, and I heard a few were landed a few years ago at Cox’s Ledge, well to the east. That’s the limited extent of my personal background with this fish. Basically nothing.

But about a month ago, something changed. Commercial fishermen reported that a good number of the highly prized fish were being landed to the east of Block Island, and the catches have continued to build. Now, with the recent break in the winds, recreational anglers have picked up their fair share too.

“It’s a fishery that is totally abnormal for us,” said Capt. Jamie Quaresimo of the Miss Montauk II, a Montauk party boat, who normally focuses on sea bass and cod on his daylong trips this time of the year. “On Saturday’s trip, I think half the folks on the boat did not realize what they caught. We are hearing and seeing haddock catches covering over a span of 50 miles.”

Indeed, the fish have been spotted to the west of Montauk in the ocean off Shinnecock, Moriches, and even Captree.

“We are seeing something that has never been seen before in our waters,” he added. Quaresimo hopes the catches will continue and he plans to be on the search for haddock, along with cod and sea bass, as conditions allow. As recently as Monday, the Viking FiveStar even planned to fish exclusively for haddock, departing at 5 a.m. More such specialized trips may be scheduled in the future.

Why the fish are now here is anybody’s guess as is the question of how long they will hang around. But at least for now, both commercial and recreational fishermen will continue to enjoy this totally unexpected early holiday surprise.

“Blackfishing has been tremendous of late,” said Capt. Michael Potts of the charter boat Bluefin IV out of Montauk. “It’s been easy limits by 9 a.m. Cod and sea bass have been excellent, too.” Note that the blackfish season comes to a close on Dec. 22, around the same time Potts plans to haul his boat out for maintenance. 

“Still a ton of small stripers on the ocean beaches,” exclaimed Harvey Bennett, the owner of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett. “Fishing for them has been pretty much nonstop.” Note that the striped bass season ends on Dec. 15. Bennett was also enthused about the fishing for largemouth bass in Fort Pond in Montauk. “Nightcrawlers and jitterbugs have been the hot ticket to catch them.”

Ever the competitor, Bennett has two fishing contests underway. The first is for the largest fresh or saltwater fish landed, the second for the largest striped bass taken on the final day of the season. Sam Doughty of Amagansett currently holds the lead for the largest fish, an eight-pound codfish, and is also in second for a seven-pound blackfish. Rick Spero of East Hampton has a grip on third place with a chunky six-pound largemouth bass. 

The $20 tournament fee also enters contestants into a raffle to win a 10-foot surf rod, and pays for membership into the Amagansett Sportfishing Association. Proceeds will go to underprivileged children in the Dominican Republic, where Bennett has shipped off a steady supply of clothes, shoes, school supplies, and baseball equipment. 

While the summer flounder season closed at the end of September for recreational anglers, commercial fishermen have still been allowed to retain fish, albeit on a small scale. Effective last Saturday, their daily trip limit was reduced to a mere 70 pounds, but will be increased to 210 pounds on Sunday. However, on Jan. 1, the limit goes down to a paltry 50 pounds. Not exactly a happy new year for some. 

We welcome your fishing tips, observations, and photographs at [email protected]. You can find the “On the Water” column on Twitter at @ehstarfishing.

The post-noon photoperiod will lose an hour on Sunday, while the winter solstice is only 50 days away. Any day now the lawn will be coated with gray upon waking, and frosts will soon become an everyday phenomenon. 

It was a little above 50 degrees at 3:30 in the afternoon when a Carolina wren began singing outside my window. Such will even happen during subfreezing temperatures in the middle of winter. Does he miss the Carolinas, or was he just trying to cheer me up?

This sparrow-size bird has been in these parts since the late 1960s. In late December of 1974 I was a member of the late Roy Wilcox’s party counting the birds by number and species in Noyac as part of the Orient Christmas Bird Count. In the late afternoon, Roy took us to a spot a little east of the Elizabeth Morton Wildlife Refuge, stopped the car on a side street a bit north of Noyac Road, and asked us to listen carefully.

In those days we didn’t have devices to play the songs of the birds to get them to call back. After about five minutes of absolute silence, it started, loud and clear. The repetitive but cheery sound of the Carolina wren rolled across the lawn to our ears. I had been living in California until that fall and it was the first time I ever heard a Carolina wren sing. Thereafter, on almost every Christmas count on eastern Long Island, I listened for that loud repetitive song and ultimately heard it.

The time of the annual Audubon bird counts that now take place across the world is approaching. Most summer-resident birds are gone, but a few linger, especially when the weather is fall-like and not winter-like and while wild fruit and insects remain and while birdfeeders are hung up and filled with seeds and other goodies. Kinglets and goldfinches are among the last to leave for warmer climes. Until Saturday’s northeaster there had been a male golden-crowned kinglet in my tiny yard feeding on aster and goldenrod seeds, a few of which are still flowering along with one of my tall evening primroses. I have not seen him since.

One of our most beautiful birds, the male yellow-bellied sapsucker has been hanging around, too. Occasionally, one will show up on one of the winter counts. If you’ve never seen one, I’m sure you’ve noticed its “footprints” on the trunk of the occasional tree. The sapsucker is the woodpecker that “drills” Cheerios-size holes in neat rows both up and down and across in order to find nutritious sap to feed on (and insects, too?). Terry Sullivan photographed a male at his feeder in eastern Sag Harbor the other day, and on Saturday Jean Held found one lying on the sidewalk on the north side of the Corner Bar on the corner of Main and Bay Streets in Sag Harbor.

Apparently, it flew into one of the large windows on that side of the building. It is not unusual for a bird to fly into a window, especially when pursued by a hawk. In most cases the fleeing bird is stunned and sometimes injured, but rarely killed by the impact. The rule is to pick the bird up and put it in a cardboard box covered over with a towel. If the bird is okay, it will recover after several minutes and will fly away when the towel is removed. If it is injured, the local number to call is 631-728-WILD, the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center in Hampton Bays, which treats injured birds.

Jean says the best remedy for decreasing the number of bird-window collisions is to have the window glass facing down at a slight angle. People also post decals to the window’s inside in order to deter window strikes.

In the song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from “The Wizard of Oz,” Judy Garland notes that birds fly over the rainbow and wonders why she can’t as well. Humans are good at a lot of things but we can’t fly under our own power. Bats are the only mammals that fly like birds.

A New World warbler, or vireo, the size of a house mouse can fly 1,000 miles, not all at once, but within a week or two during migration time. It has been documented that a hummingbird, half the size of a warbler, can fly across the Gulf of Mexico in one trip. In this sense, birds are miraculous. They are not only colorful, they sing beautifully and fly astutely over long distances. In my 83 years on earth, I have never heard of a single case of one of these miraculous creatures killing a human. On the other hand, I have witnessed hundreds of bird killings by humans, some by my own hand. If we don’t kill them ourselves, we build tall buildings they fly into, we erect wind turbines that knock them from the sky, we apply all sorts of poisons to our food and ornamental plants, and so on, and so on.

Which of us, then, is the more human? Homo sapiens or the thousands of members of the class Aves? I would pick the latter.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

On Oct. 23, I joined a group of friends for a full day of fishing on the Oh Brother!, a charter boat out of Montauk whose captain, Rob Aaronson, and his first mate, Rudi Bonicelli, are seasoned pros who know the inshore and offshore waters around Montauk as well as anyone. 

They are quality people who are also blessed with a sharp sense of humor drawn from their decades of fishing. They work well as a team. And, most important, they make me laugh. Good friends are like that.

We had an early departure time of 5:30 a.m., and Bonicelli, who is a mean cook on the side when not wetting a line, untied the last stern line in the dark. Sunrise would not occur until 7:08, but Aaronson figured that the flood tide would be productive at that early hour at the Pollock Rip, just off the Montauk Lighthouse, before we continued our trip in search of black sea bass.

Nearing our destination, I noticed several large red lights to the east blinking simultaneously on the still-dark horizon. Having not been near the lighthouse at night in quite a while, I quickly realized the lights emanated from the five windmills that comprise the offshore wind farm located about three miles south of Block Island. The windmills tower hundreds of feet over the Atlantic Ocean, and their presence, especially when viewed up close in the daylight, is impressive.

But their unique glow at night also gave me déjà vu as I stood on the stern deck taking in the rhythmic pulse of lights to the east. 

The scene brought back the uneasy memory of an experience I had about 25 years ago while fishing from the ocean beach in Bridgehampton. Even today, I’m still perplexed. Appropriately, it was Halloween scary.

For a few days prior, rumors abounded that a good striped bass bite was going on at the beach in the early morning. I drove down to the ocean to check it out. It was about 3 a.m., with a cloudless night sky, and the air was rather warm. The ocean was unusually calm, and there was barely any surf. After unpacking my gear and fumbling with my flashlight trying to pick out my lure of choice, I finally began to cast into the inky blackness ahead of me.

About 20 minutes later, with nary a strike, I trudged back up to the beach in my waders to select a different lure. There had to be a striper feeding in the early morning wash. Facing back at the water and taking in the beautiful mass of stars shining brightly above, I was suddenly jolted by a sight I have never seen before: eight blinking red lights flying in a sideways V formation.

The lights were in perfect unison and distance apart, and were heading west to east across the beach at an astonishing speed. Equally confusing was that whatever passed in front of me over the open ocean happened in a span lasting no more than three seconds. And it did not make a sound. Utter silence.

I stood there in disbelief, and I blinked and rubbed my eyes. I tried to comprehend what I had just witnessed. I knew what I saw was real, but it made no sense. At that point, probably not more than a minute after the event, fear took over. I also felt incredibly alone. 

Catching a striped bass was no longer my goal. I gathered my bag of lures and my rod, and ran back to my truck as fast as I could. I didn’t even take the time to remove my waders. After trembling the whole way home, I retired back to the safety and comfort of my bed. 

To this day, I still wonder what it was, and until now have told only a few people about it. 

It was most certainly a close encounter of the unknown kind. 

Going back to the fishing trip, Capt. Aaronson made good on his prediction, as the striped bass action was solid on trolled bucktails. It took barely more than a minute or two to hook into a bass once the lure reached the desired depth. After securing our limit, we headed closer to the windmills, where the sea bass were also in a hungry mood. A great day by all accounts. And no U.F.O.s were seen.

“Saturday was a washout with the nor’easter, but there were stripers taken on Sunday from Georgica to Napeague,” said Harvey Bennett at the Tackle Shop in Amagansett. “Looks like we will have a good fall run this season. Squid have been good in Three Mile Harbor, too.”

Bennett also announced details of two fishing contests to help underprivileged children at a baseball camp in the Dominican Republic. The first contest is for the largest fish landed (any species of saltwater or freshwater fish can be weighed in) by Dec. 15. The lucky winner will receive a 10-foot Shakespeare fishing rod. 

The second event is for the largest striped bass taken on the final day of the season (Dec. 15). Bennett will provide a Tackle Shop hat and a Salty wooden surf plug to the angler coming out on top. The $20 entry fee also includes a one-year membership in the Amagansett Sportfishing Association and entry into a raffle for a Penn 706 surf reel.

“This is all very casual with no hard rules,” he said. “I will even accept pictures of fish and estimated weights. This is just to have some fun and raise a few extra bucks for some very deserving kids down there.” 

Bennett also reminded people that hunting season is now in full swing. “Archery deer and woodcock season are now open, so folks walking or hiking should be aware,” he said. Today also marks the opening day to hunt small game, including pheasant, quail, rabbit, and squirrel.

“Good bass fishing along the surf and blackfish, when the winds lay down, have been solid as well,” Sebastian Gorgone of Mrs. Sam’s Bait and Tackle in East Hampton said on Monday, which also happened to be his birthday. “And the run of Halloween squid continues in Three Mile Harbor off the docks.”

We welcome your fishing tips, observations, and photographs at [email protected]. You can find the “On the Water” column on Twitter at @ehstarfishing.

Fall marches on! At 6:30 last Thursday evening on a trip to Southampton Village by way of Deerfield and Edge of Woods Roads, both lanes were clear and only a single leaf fell. Three hours later on the return trip the roads were half leaf-covered while three dozen leaves floated down. Fall had begun in earnest.

Readers may remember that last fall, the oak leaves didn’t turn until near the end of November and forsythia shrubs were blooming for a second time. We may well be in the throes of global warming but you wouldn’t know it by the time of the leaf turn. When I was a boy growing up in Mattituck, across the bay, the oak leaves began reddening in the last week of October and by Halloween they were falling.

We didn’t have drones, cellphones, and the other myriad devices that kids have nowadays. We played games — tag, giant steps, ring-a-levio, knife, hide-and-seek, red light, and the like — to amuse ourselves. I invented a new game as an adolescent to go with the others: Catch a falling leaf. If it was calm it was an easy matter, but in a breeze it was difficult.

During one of these catch-a-leaf games I caught one that was so beautiful I took it home and for unfathomable reason named it Freddy. My family didn’t have a dog, so I kept and pampered that pet leaf for several weeks until it turned a morbid brown.

I haven’t tried leaf catching since, but I am still very aware of leaf turn and leaf fall. While living for 14 years on the West Coast I missed it. Now I revel in it. I guess you would have to say that October is my favorite month, notably because of the color of the leaves.

We didn’t have leaf blowers in the 1940s and 1950s. We mostly had bamboo rakes. A young boy could make a buck or two after school and on the weekends raking leaves off lawns and walkways. The custom was to rake the leaves to the edge of the road and into piles, then set fire to them. As they smoldered away they gave off a pleasant odor. Because of anti-pollution laws in effect these days that practice is no longer condoned. Noise pollution from leaf blowers is not as regulated.

Sometimes the leaf piles we made were so large that it became great fun to run and leap into them. If you did it correctly, your fall would be cushioned, as if you were falling on an air mattress.

Turning and falling leaves serve a purpose in nature. Squirrels that collect the acorns from oaks also often collect the fall leaves. What do they do with them? They use them to construct their dreys, circular nests of twigs and leaves to get them through winter storms and winter freezes.

I’ve never seen a squirrel make such a drey, but I have counted them in Southampton and East Hampton Towns during the last few years. On the other hand, Jean Held, who lives in eastern Sag Harbor, observed a gray squirrel in her yard fashion one of these winter abodes and even was able to photograph it carrying a leaf and incorporating it into a drey attached to a tree crotch in her yard.

Jean has both chipmunks and squirrels. The chipmunks hibernate underground. The squirrels remain active, but take long snoozes in their dreys. I count the dreys to see if they are related to squirrel numbers in a given year. Last fall was marked by an abundant acorn production. Acorns are one of the chief food items of gray squirrels. It would stand to reason that the more acorns, the more squirrels there are.

When acorns are scarce, or drop before ripening, the squirrels have to spend more time foraging. To fill their nutrition needs they often leave their home territories to forage elsewhere, and in doing so, often cross busy thoroughfares. The number of roadkill squirrels in a given year is a measure of the size of the squirrel population and the success or failure of the acorn crop. I would postulate that the gray squirrel population, which boomed after last year’s bountiful acorn crop, will suffer 

a measurable decline in the coming spring. Comparing the number of dreys per mile of road this fall to the number next fall should bear out this notion.

A note of caution, however: I don’t know how to tell a gray squirrel drey from a flying squirrel drey. Flying squirrels, which have been increasing in number since populating the South Fork for the first time in this new millennium, are also known to make dreys for overwintering, especially when tree cavities are hard to come by. They prefer insects to acorns, thus the same reasoning doesn’t apply to them when postulating the ups and downs in their population.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

I had set my alarm clock on Sunday night for an early wakeup call the next morning. But my own internal timepiece is very reliable, and I already knew I would be awake prematurely. 

My sleep that night, as expected, was restless. It always is the night before the first Monday of November. 

Why the anxiousness and lack of sleep on such an odd day in November? It’s pretty simple really: Monday at sunrise is the opening of the bay scallop season in state waters. Most of my friends and former co-workers know how important this date is to me. 

How significant? Well, one time a few years ago, I was able to persuade the C.E.O. of the Fortune 50 company I worked for to announce our third-quarter results on the Friday before scallop season opened (we were originally scheduled to report the following Monday, on the first day of the season). I have had this ritual for several decades, and you can’t break with tradition, right? Plus, he received some fresh scallops for his kindness. 

I truly appreciated how accommodating and understanding my boss was to switch the dates just for me, Wall Street be damned. Scallops are a treasured commodity around here. Forget about frozen concentrate orange juice, pork belly, or gold futures. Given their popularity, bay scallops should have their own futures market on the big board.

I was up and dressed well before my alarm was set to go off on Monday. It was still pitch dark, but there was a lot of anticipation amongst the rather sizable crowd of men clad in rubber boots and heavily-worn sweatshirts lined up to pour a cup of hot coffee at the 7-Eleven in Sag Harbor. Clearly wasn’t the only one who savored and favored the lure of this highly treasured shellfish from our inner bays and harbors.

However, I was also fighting a rather significant ailment. About 10 days earlier, I had wiped out while playing ice hockey and busted my hip badly. Walking and driving have been an extreme chore, and I worried just how I would be able to maneuver and lift my heavy six-iron dredges. Two visits to my doctor confirmed that it would take many weeks, if not months, to properly heal, and I would need to be careful.

While it’s not like playing hockey, a competitive team sport, scalloping should be considered a contact sport at the very least. It’s hard and strenuous work on the entire body. 

Figuring I needed to protect my hip to prevent further pain and damage, I decided to wear my padded ice hockey pants under my foul weather gear. Other than staying home, I had no other obvious option. However, getting my oilskin pants over my hockey gear was no easy task. The fit was snug and comical to the two other people who joined me on Monday morning. I shrugged off the laughter. There are no beauty contests in scalloping. 

The engine warmed up as we secured our gear on board, and it was off to the scallop grounds. But where to start? Unless you do some pre-season scouting, you are literally playing a game of hide and seek. Figuring I had seen a decent set of juvenile scallops in my local area late last fall, I decided to stay close to home. 

It was a good call, as we claimed our three bushels of scallops in a few hours (noncommercial scallopers are allowed to retain one bushel per person, per day). We also returned to port before the northeast wind gained strength and the heavy downpours arrived. All in all, it does not get any better. It was a very pleasant surprise.

While the season for scallops continues to the end of March, the vast majority of the catch usually takes place within the first few weeks after Monday’s opening. It’s too early to say whether the harvest will be sustainable at these levels. But given how productive it was on Monday, even while I was anticipating a rather poor season, there is a good amount of optimism for a long and prosperous season among many who dragged their dredges that day. Even better, there were plenty of juvenile scallops (that will be ready to be harvested next November), hauled up in the dredges. Only time will tell on both fronts.

On the local fishing scene, some solid action continues with many species.

“The bass fishing off the beach, especially from Mecox heading west, has been excellent,” said Ken Morse, the owner of Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor. “And when the winds allow, anyone I know who has tried for blackfish reports really good fishing.” Morse has a plentiful supply of green crabs for those looking for some late season blackfish. “And there are still some false albacore near Plum Island, but that should be coming to an end soon,” he added.

“Lots of striped bass around, but the bigger fish are actually back in the bays,” said Harvey Bennett of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett. “It’s really weird, so hopefully some bigger fish will be back on the beach soon. We shall see.” Bennett also confirmed the excellent blackfish action out at Montauk, as well as porgy and sea bass fishing. “Lots of people start to stow away their rods for the season, but some of the best action around here happens in November.”

It’s also not too late to sign up for Bennett’s two fishing contests. The $20 entry fee also includes a yearlong membership in the Amagansett Sportfishing Association and an end-of-season raffle. 

As for Montauk striped bass, it has been a bit of a challenge finding keeper-sized fish. “Lots of little bass around,” said Michael Vegessi of the open boat Lazybones. “But keeper-size fish are hard to come by.” Vegessi expects to stick to diamond jigging for the next few weeks.

We welcome your fishing tips, observations, and photographs at [email protected]. You can find the “On the Water” column on Twitter at @ehstarfishing.

Monday was the first really cold day of fall. Frost had formed overnight on lawns, but it was sunny. Victoria Bustamante picked me up and we were off to Caumsett State Park at the very northwest end of Suffolk County and the Long Island Sound. Once the estate of Marshall Field, complete with a dairy farm, it is now a beautiful 1,500-acre preserve with a local Matinecock Indian name meaning “place by a sharp rock.” The sharp rock was one of several glacial erratics left when the last advance of the Wisconsin glaciation swept down across the whole of northern America more than 10,000 years ago, creating the North Fork and the morainal line of Harbor Hills that runs along the Sound from Southold on the east to beyond Great Neck at the edge of New York City on the west.

We were to meet up with Sue Feustel, the environmental chairwoman of the Caumsett Foundation. Since the idea arose in 2008, she has overseen the transformation of more than 50 acres from old pastureland into a new Long Island grassland. Two other western Long Island grasslands are being saved and restored in Nassau County a few miles away, among them the 17-acre remnant of the Hempstead Plains, which once occupied a third of the county. Victoria and I had first heard of this third grassland project at a meeting at the Vanderbilt Estate the previous year and we were excited about the prospect of seeing it in progress. Neither of us had been to the park previously. It was an exciting adventure.

We met Sue and another botanist and habitat restorer, A.W. Cafarelli, in the park’s parking lot shortly before noon and spent the rest of the day touring the parklands, first by foot, then by car, as the park is very large. It varied from tidal wetlands and sandy beaches, where it touched the Sound on the north, to rich hardwood forest behind the shore running all the way up to a plateau, where the historical old farm buildings, now park headquarters, and the grasslands stood.

Sue, a former grade school teacher, is an avid birdwatcher as well as a self-taught botanist, and proved a knowledgeable guide as we explored the new fields covered with the primary grasses that made up old Long Island grasslands: little bluestem, big bluestem, and Indian grass. Vicki and I were well familiar with these grasses as they covered a third of the hamlet of Montauk. Vicki’s abode backs up to such a combination, part of Suffolk County’s Montauk County Park east of Lake Montauk and west of the lighthouse.

Other prairie species such as switch grass, goldenrods, and asters were also present, as were several weedy species, including the very aggressive and not-too-pretty mugwort, which has made its way all the way to the Montauk grasslands and the famous lighthouse beyond from New York City in a matter of a three or four decades. The presence of weeds from abroad is part of the challenge of fashioning a native grassland from old farmland or woodland. In this situation, several nonnative trees including the weedy tree-of-heaven had to be removed along with some native ones, including walnuts, or the grasslands now in progress would have been stymied from the onset.

One of the motivations for this undertaking happened by chance — the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly, rare to the North, showed up in 2008, a first on Long Island as a local breeder. It is believed to have come from Connecticut across the Sound. It needs plantain and a few other weedy and/or native plants to survive and these are often found near grasslands. The checkerspot has yet to be found breeding in Montauk. It is not migratory like the monarch; its larvae (and pupae) remain in the area where first deposited, survive the winter, and then emerge as adults the following spring.

Producing a new grassland is not only challenged by a panoply of weedy species, it is also challenged by some of the critters that come to live in it. In the case of the Caumsett Park grasslands, a chief culprit is the woodchuck. We saw several fresh holes during our walk. Deer can also be problematic, but can also help, as they prefer chomping on some of the weedy species over the grasses.

Evidence that the grasslands restoration is working is seen in the birds that have come to populate them. Both meadowlarks and bobolinks breed in the park, as do Savannah sparrows. On our walks and rides we saw goldfinches, golden-crowned kinglets, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, song sparrows, chickadees, white-throated sparrows, and pine siskins. A merlin is resident as well as a red-tailed hawk or two.

At the end of the day we drove down to the water through the rich woodlands. We encountered several oak species, beeches, red maples, sassafras, and other hardwoods familiar to us, as well as Christmas ferns and mapleleaf viburnums, partridge peas, and silverrods (the white-flowered goldenrod that is also found in Montauk woodlands). Some of the trees were two or more feet in diameter and seemingly reached as high as 100 feet. They were taller than any of the tallest on the South Fork.

We worked our way down to the sandy beach with its high wrack line and adjoining salt marshes. There was a bit of Eurasian phragmites here and there, but nothing like what Vicki and I were accustomed to seeing when visiting South Fork wetlands.

It was getting dark when Sue drove us back to the park headquarters, where a couple of song sparrows greeted us. We parted with embraces and smiles. It had been a wonderful experience. We would come back again to this Shangri-la in the midst of busy development, malls, and more vehicular traffic than you could shake a stick at. With Vicki at the wheel, we made our way home on the Long Island Expressway, talking over the trip, not minding the heavy traffic.

—

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

There is an adage that says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I’m not clear where or how that saying came about, and I’m not sure how true it is for canines, but I do recognize that the more I advance in years, the more stubborn I am in my day to-day tasks and routines. 

This theory also relates to the way I fish for species like striped bass, fluke, cod, sea bass, or blackfish. I’ve never been an early adopter of the latest fishing techniques, baits, and tackle. Instead, I’ve tended to stick to the tried and true ways I learned. Stubbornness is not a good trait.

As per fluke, I always believed that the only way to catch one was to bait up with the classic combination of a strip of squid adorned with a sand eel or spearing fished on a three-foot monofilament leader. It’s old school, and it is still a popular and successful method for landing summer flounder. 

Sure, I mixed it up a bit by using a live killifish or a strip of sea robin or bluefish, but the basic rig remained the same. It was pretty reliable and worked for the most part. Why rock the boat?

However, about 10 years ago after a few fishless trips, I finally saw the light and broke my fluke fishing habit. Inspired by other people’s success stories, I tied on a bucktail jig and my catch rate improved almost immediately. 

Today, I probably fish a jig for fluke adorned with a piece of bait, or more likely an artificial specimen from one of the extensive line of Gulp! products about 95 percent of the time, unless the drift is too fast to hold bottom. It took a long time, but I finally learned.

It was the same deal when I went for blackfish. For as long as I can remember, I used a basic, two-hook rig adorned with a piece of green crab. This rig is of the simplest kind and always worked for me. Much like my fluke rig of many decades, I saw no reason to alter my approach.

Last week, when we had one of those rare calm-weather days, I took a ride in my boat to the north side of Plum Island to try my luck. I had a bushel of green crabs and anchored up on one of my favorite pieces of bottom in about 40 feet of water. The outgoing tide was not strong, and I was able to hold near the rocky bottom, where blackfish reside, with five ounces of lead.

But while the conditions were perfect, the fishing was not. After an hour, with just one short blackfish to show for my effort, I debated whether to try another spot. Then I remembered I had purchased a different rig and decided to change my game plan and, hopefully, my luck.

As it happened, a few days before my trip, I had caught up with Ken Morse of Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor. While picking up my burlap sack of crabs that morning, he urged me to try a blackfish jig on my next outing.

“Try one of these and I bet you will never go back to your basic rig,” he said from behind his counter, the two-ounce orange and green-hued lead head secured with a stout 3/0 hook held in the palm of his hand. “They are fun to use. Just bait up with either a whole or half crab and occasionally bounce it off the bottom.”

Re-rigging took only a minute and I secured half of a green crab to my new lure. Dropping to the bottom, I engaged my reel to its locked position and immediately hooked into a nice-size fish. A minute later, I netted a nice four-pound black. 

Thinking I had picked up a dose of beginner’s luck, I re-baited my jig. And again, as soon as it hit bottom, it was inhaled by another fish of similar size. The scene on my back deck was repeated over and over for more than two hours. It was as if a light switch were turned on and the fishing was suddenly intense. 

Never before had I witnessed such a change in the action over such a short period of time. I was using the same bait — green crabs — but the presentation was different. And the change I made was all that was required to enjoy a great morning I will not forget for a long time.

The next day, I returned to Morse’s establishment to extend my appreciation for his advice. He smiled.

“Sometimes you have to try some new tricks and techniques,” he said. “It’s never too late to learn.”

I just wish I had been more open to change earlier in my fishing exploits. Alas, better late than never.

Speaking of bucktails, the popular lure continues to produce well from the local ocean beaches, where small striped bass are in residence.

“The fishing has been good, but most of the fish are rats,” said Morse. “But a few keepers are around.” Morse was also enthused about the blackfish bite happening off Plum and Fishers Island. “When the winds are down, which has been pretty rare this fall, the fishing has been excellent.” Hint: Try a blackfish jig.

“Bass fishing has been good on the beaches, but lots of smallies though,” said Harvey Bennett of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett. “There are keepers around, but they have been taken mostly at night. As soon as the sun comes up, the small bass are on the scene.”

Bennett confirmed that the sea bass bite off Block Island remains good, and that a few codfish are also in the mix. “Blackfish action has also been good when the wind allows.” 

It’s not too late to sign up for Bennett’s fishing contest and raffle to support underprivileged youth in the Dominican Republic. “You have to be in it, to win it,” he said. 

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We welcome your fishing tips,  observations, and photographs at  [email protected].

You can find the  “On the Water” column on Twitter at  @ehstarfishing.

Long Island is an island. More than 450 years after its naming, following its discovery by Columbus, and at least 200 years after geologists said so, New York’s highest court decided that it was indeed an island. But it’s not the only Long Island in America; there’s one on the upper Pacific Coast and no doubt others, should one study the maps closely.

Its salient geologic features are its beaches, its coastal bluffs, especially on its north side but also on its south along the hamlet of Montauk, its dunes, soils, its water courses, not to mention its varied ever-changing vegetative covering.

Because Long Island was largely created by the visitation of glaciers, it is also differentiated from more southern coastal areas by the presence of glacial erratics and kettleholes. Glacial erratics are the large boulders, some more than 50 feet in diameter and elevation, that sit along the North Shore and the northern part of the South Shore, especially on the South Fork. Kettleholes dot the landscape wherever the glacier visited, again, on the South Fork we are rich with them.

The term kettlehole is a vernacular word that is solidly implanted in the geologic scientific literature in the same way as “erratics” and “hoodoos,” those ocean-fluted bluffs situated between the Montauk Lighthouse and downtown Montauk. Montauk is rich in all three. Montauk is also one of the few spots on Long Island that has two layers of fresh groundwater — one that is more or less permanent that bottoms out near sea level, another well above sea level, with a surface only a few feet below grade depending upon location. This upper soil water layer rests on clay lenses and comes and goes depending on the amount of rainfall in a given year.

Most of our ponds that are roughly bowl-shaped are kettlehole ponds. There is a well-traveled road that runs from west to east through the Bridgehampton and Water Mill farmlands called Scuttlehole, an obvious corruption of kettlehole. Shorts Pond, a classic kettlehole pond, sits immediately to the north of it, just east of the Atlantic Golf Course in Bridgehampton.

Kettleholes were formed by large chunks of ice that sat on the ground and melted during the glacial retreat. As they did so, the sediments they contained accumulated mostly on their edges. The combination of jettisoned sediments and an ice block’s weight created the bowl-shaped depressions, which retained most of the meltwater left behind.

One of New York State’s most renowned botanists, Norman Taylor, came to Montauk to study its flora in the early 1920s. He spent a lot of time studying Montauk’s kettleholes, because they contained so many plants, both aquatic and wetland ones and, farther up the side, terrestrial ones. Almost all of the kettleholes he studied still exist today, and despite the fact that their original floras have been somewhat bastardized by the introduction of such exotic plants as mile-a-minute weed, Japanese knotweed, mugwort, and phragmites, they are still flourishing.

When I taught ecology at Southampton College in the 1970s, the textbook I used had a big section on plant succession, a classic example of which is the change in a dry kettlehole’s flora over time, especially as it fills with more and more water and becomes a pond. That is happening today at an accelerated rate, especially in coastal ponds, as the fresh groundwater is buoyed up by denser salt water below, the level of which is elevating a few millimeters a year as sea level rises.

A dry kettlehole, of which there are still several around, especially in the moraine, takes on water every time it rains but most become dry again as the water percolates down through the kettlehole’s porous bottom. Kettleholes that barely sit above an aquifer that is slowly rising will take on water as the groundwater rises. The dry soil plants are gradually replaced by wetland species, then by pond species as the filling increases. 

In Wainscott, north of Daniel’s Hole Road and next to a small subdivision, there is one of these nameless deep kettleholes, which is filled with more and more water with each passing decade. There are several such holes that are beginning to become wet throughout Hither Woods in Montauk. In droughts, such as the record ones in the 1960s, some kettleholes lost all their water and did not fill again until rainy years. One of these is Little Poxabogue Pond in Sagaponack.

In the older textbooks, such kettleholes would ultimately become dry as they became occupied by trees; the trees used up more water than the rainfall provided. On Long Island with normal rainfalls and with the water table so close to the surface throughout so much of the area, such cases of a wet kettlehole reverting to a dry one will be very rare.

There is a very large, mostly unexplored kettlehole in northern Montauk off Kettlehole Road, east of Fort and Tuthill Ponds and west of Culloden. It is very deep, quite overgrown, and, as far as I know, has hardly been explored. If I were younger I would dive in. Perhaps one of those budding naturalists in the Third House nature group will do it for me — before it fills with water!

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

Bob Dylan did not write “the answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,” here on the East End — it was probably in a brownstone apartment in Greenwich Village — but if the Nobel laureate has been in these environs over the past 10 days or so, he most certainly would have been inspired to pen that familiar refrain, as the gusty winds have been unrelenting of late, thwarting many a planned fishing trip.

The answer, in terms of fishing, was that little has been done of late.

The bushel of green crabs I secured two weeks ago and stored in my old lobster crate at my slip in anticipation of some early season blackfishing have yet to be used. Lucky for them. One of these days I hope to utilize them when the winds abate.

It has been frustrating to stay tied to the dock. The winds have been a true curse, but I was determined to get a few hours on the water on Friday morning, as a very brief weather window was forecast before gusts up to 30 knots were predicted around the noon hour. It was time to finally fish.

Rather than taking my boat out, I decided to play it safe and take a half-day trip for striped bass and bluefish out of Montauk. The boat of choice was the Lazybones, where six-ounce diamond jigs are utilized exclusively — my favorite way to pursue stripers from a boat.

Driving past East Hampton High School on the way to the dock, I noticed the outside temperature was 31 degrees. It felt like fall for sure, or even early winter. Upon arriving in Montauk, though, the temperature was a rather balmy 44 degrees, due mainly to the still-warm waters of the nearby Atlantic that surround the historical port. Not bad. While there was a rather stiff breeze out of the southwest, it was not enough to dissuade a full boat of anglers who were also frustrated by the many consecutive days of too much wind.

“We have the ebb tide all morning and the fishing has been good at the Pollock Rip when we can get out,” explained Capt. Michael Vegessi, the owner of the popular boat for the past 34 years, speaking of a significant rise and fall in the bottom located about a mile east of the Montauk Lighthouse. “We got out briefly on Wednesday morning with a light crowd, and the fishing was excellent with many keeper-sized bass thrown back. The fish are feeding heavily on large sand eels and whitebait.”

After a 30-minute ride, Vegessi eased off on the throttle and a scan of the fish finder clearly showed large schools of bait and striped bass stacked before and beyond the rip line. In addition, several large schools of hungry false albacore could be seen nearby thrashing about on the surface chasing smaller prey. The sea was teeming with life. 

At the sound of the horn, all 30 anglers aboard simultaneously launched their shiny metallic jigs in unison into the turbulent tide, and it only took a few seconds before the first bass was hooked up and successfully landed. A few minutes later, just about everyone aboard was fighting a fish, either a bass or feisty cocktail-size bluefish. It was a great start to the trip. Except for me.

Another blast of the horn and it was time to make another drift into the stiff three-knot tide to repeat the action.

“Try another diamond jig,” said the seasoned captain, urging me to replace my heavier Bridgeport-style jig with a skinnier and lighter lure that most of the other fares were using successfully. It was like being lectured by one of my old college professors, who knew much more than me. I acknowledged his command.

Vegessi knows his stuff. I quickly caught a plucky 29-inch striped bass shortly into the next drift. I was off the hook, so to speak, and dinner was secured. A simple lesson was made clear: Always obey the captain.

The fishing continued at a rather solid pace for the next three hours. Some drifts were better than others, and some other fish also inhaled our jigs, including false albacore, porgy, sea bass, sea robins, and even a smooth dogfish. It was a real mixed bag and smiles were in abundance on both the starboard and port sides of the boat. All were grateful to be where they were that morning, despite the stiffening breeze.

“I hope we have a good run of bass this fall,” Vegessi said in the pilothouse on the return to Montauk Harbor. “Ever since Sandy five years ago, for some reason the stripers have bypassed Montauk on the migration south. The bass fishing has stopped by mid-October, so I hope things finally change this fall. Time will tell. So far, so good.”

And perhaps the answer to that will be found blowing in the wind.

One thing that the wind has not stopped is the excellent run of striped bass taking place from Georgica all the way eastward to Napeague. “I’ve been selling diamond jigs like crazy; they are the hot lure right now,” said Sebastian Gorgone of Mrs. Sam’s Bait and Tackle in East Hampton. “The key is to fish them low and slow on the retrieve. It’s the best fall action I’ve seen in five years. Lots of nice fish, too.”

Gorgone was equally enthralled about the annual Halloween run of squid underway at the commercial dock in Three Mile Harbor as well as at the jetty entrance. “The action has been excellent on squid jigs,” he added. “People are filling up buckets of them.” As for blackfish fans, anglers are chomping at the bit for a chance to get out when the conditions calm down. 

Over at the Tackle Shop in Amagansett, the owner, Harvey Bennett, also raved about the excellent bass bite happening just down the road from his shop, “even in the wind,” he said. “Fish a skinny lure like a diamond jig and you’re almost guaranteed dinner. It’s been that good.”

Bennett also confirmed that false albacore remain thick in Gardiner’s Bay, as well on the east side of Gardiner’s Island. “The water is still very warm,” he said. “They should be hanging around for a while more.” He agreed with Gorgone that squid were “thick in Three Mile Harbor.”

Bennett also expressed thanks to those who recently donated used baseball equipment and school supplies for underprivileged children in the Dominican Republic. “The outpouring of support has been tremendous,” he said. He plans to ship another box or two of the wares to the country shortly, and it’s not too late to donate more, he said. 

Back on the surf scene, there was a change on the leaderboard in the hotly contested Montauk Locals Surfcasting Striped Bass Tournament, as Nick Apostolides landed a solid 41-pound bass late last week. It was the largest striper landed by the dedicated angler. The contest continues until the end of November. 

—

We welcome your fishing tips, 

observations, and photographs at 

[email protected]. You can find the 

“On the Water” column on Twitter at 

@ehstarfishing.

Everyone who fishes has his or her share of fish stories. Some are impossible to believe, while some are clearly embellished and need to be taken with a grain of salt, along with a wry smile of doubt. But some are actually the honest truth, no matter how far-fetched they may sound.

It was sunny and windy on the afternoon of Oct. 17 when Joe McDonald and Phillip Schnell decided to do some striped bass fishing from the ocean beach in Montauk. But instead of landing a striper, the two local anglers crossed paths with a thresher shark so close to shore they could hardly believe it themselves. 

A strong outgoing tide that day produced a low tide that trapped the shark in shallow water, most likely while feeding on a school of bunker and hickory shad between the beach and an offshore sandbar. They took out their fishing gear, affixed with a diamond jig, and quickly landed the shark. 

“We were shocked to see the fish in such shallow water and it probably took only about three minutes to land it,” explained McDonald, who works as a mate on the Lazybones, a half-day open boat out of Montauk, where he also serves as the backup captain. “It was a surreal experience.”

With help from a few other people on the beach, the shark was lifted and trucked over to the Montauk Marine Basin, where McDonald docks his humorously named 19-foot boat, Gefilte Fish. A forklift was needed to get the thresher to the weigh scale on the dock. When it was finally secured, the shark weighed in at a whopping 469 pounds.

“That’s a big shark, but threshers do come in close to feed, as there is plenty of bait around,” said Harvey Bennett, owner of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett, who has witnessed such an event several times in the past. “When sharks get trapped like that between an offshore bar and the beach, they usually drown and/or get sand in their gills and choke. . . . They need to move constantly or they die. That’s what likely happened here.”

No matter the circumstances, McDonald and Schnell will always have a special fish story to tell over and over. And they have photos to back up their claim for any doubters.