To accommodate demand, the East Hampton Town Trustees, who manage most of the town’s beaches and waterways west of Montauk on behalf of the public, have added racks to store 40 kayaks at the end of Gerard Drive in Springs. 

The popularity of kayaking in the town’s waterways led to kayaks being left on the grass, which is a violation of the town code. “Last year, we did have Marine Patrol go there and ticket the ones in the grass,” Francis Bock, the trustees’ clerk, said at their meeting on Monday. 

“They were in the dune there, on the grass,” Brian Byrnes, a trustee, said earlier on Monday, “and Ed Michels,” the town’s chief harbormaster, “said they had impounded a bunch because they were all over the place. We said, ‘Let’s set up some racks and clean it up.’ ” A contractor constructed them, Mr. Byrnes said, completing the job late last month. 

Kayakers are required to purchase an annual permit, which costs $200, to store a kayak on the racks. As of Monday, 36 of the 40 spaces had been rented. 

“It looks a million times better,” Mr. Byrnes said of the area, but there are practical reasons for the new setup as well, he added. “There really is an advantage to having your kayak on a rack. It stays clean, it’s off the ground, you can lock it up, and it’s safe.”

A survey probably isn’t needed, but if you ask just about any experienced fisherman who shuffles along in his or her weathered oilskins and deck boots among the well-used docks and boats of Montauk Harbor who is the king of rod-and-reel commercial fishing (a “pinhooker” in local slang), most are likely to agree that John Rade, better known as Johnny, is the one who wears the crown.

The legend of Captain Rade’s unique ability to catch fish runs long and deep, more than half a century on the water to be precise, and at the age of 75, he is still at the top of his game. In commercial dockside talk, he is “high-hook” for the large catch of fish he packs out for market almost every day in season.  With a quiet and respectful low-key demeanor, whether on land or at sea, Rade has a sixth sense when it comes to knowing where, when, and how to fish. Few can touch his skill set. Fishermen respect him. Fish fear him. 

“He is by far the most respected man in the harbor,” said Capt. Richard Etzel of the charter boat Breakaway, who has known Captain Rade for several decades.

On Sunday evening, Captain Rade will witness firsthand the admiration of his peers when he is honored as the Fishing Legend of the Year at the conclusion of the 18th annual Montauk Mercury Grand Slam Fishing Tournament, presented by the Montauk Friends of Erin and the East Hampton Kiwanis Club.

Previous tournament honorees selected him to receive the award. “In the history of this tournament and award, Johnny is one of the most deserving to receive this honor and is a true legend in Montauk,” said Henry Uihlein, owner of Uihlein’s Marina in Montauk, headquarters for this weekend’s tournament and festivities. “He exemplifies what a real fisherman is by fishing by himself, on his own boat, with just a rod and reel. I’m personally honored to know Johnny. He is one of the nicest, most wholesome, and most respectful people you will ever meet.”

“I’m really surprised, but I’m very honored by this,” Captain Rade said on Saturday evening after unloading a catch of fluke at the Inlet Seafood dock in Montauk. “I just do what I do. I love fishing, especially bottom fishing. I may have slowed down a bit, but I don’t plan to stop.”

Captain Rade was born in Brooklyn, but his family moved to Montauk in 1945 when he was 2 years old. “Montauk was so simple then,” he recalled. “There were dirt roads and not many people out here, but the fishing business was getting off the ground.”

Drawn at a young age to the buzz of activity around the party and charter boats docked at Fishangri-la at the southeast end of Fort Pond Bay, where loads of New York City anglers would head after getting off the Long Island Rail Road, Captain Rade became a dock rat early in life. “I would do anything, like help clean fish,” he said. “It did not matter. I just loved being on the docks or on the water.”

After graduating from East Hampton High School, Captain Rade joined his father, and older brother, Richard, running the family-owned Marlin II party boat for 15 years. “We were mainly a porgy boat, but we also did a lot of early spring fishing for cod,” he said. “There used to be some incredible cod fishing around Montauk and Block Island.”

Captain Rade continued to sharpen his fishing prowess by working on other charter and party boats, including the Jigger II with Capt. Howie Carroll and with the Forsbergs on their Viking boats. He also fished and worked closely with Johnny Kronuch Sr., who owned Johnny’s Tackle Shop in downtown Montauk with his son for over 70 years.

“I paid attention and learned so much by working with all of these different people and boats,” he said. “I learned about tides, the moon phases, where and when to go, what baits worked best. I tried to absorb and study it all from everyone and I really tried to think like a fish, especially bottom fish like fluke, porgy, sea bass, cod, flounder, and blackfish.”

Taking that wide knowledge base and experience, Captain Rade took the plunge to go independent and bought a 16-foot skiff to fish with a rod and reel by himself. It’s a decision he does not regret. He is now on his fourth boat, a fiberglass 26-footer. While his boats have varied in size up to 32 feet, there has been one constant in all of the craft he has owned over the years. All have been named Starfish. 

“I saw that boat name in a James Bond movie and it has stuck with me ever since,” he chuckled. “It’s a simple name, but I like it.” 

When not on the water, Captain Rade has also worked at Inlet Seafood for the past 30 years packing out fish. “I guess it’s pretty clear that I was built to be working on the water,” said Captain Rade, who also happens to be an enthusiatic birdwatcher. Those fishing genes have been passed on to his son Brian, who gillnets monkfish and traps for lobster. His daughter, Judith, is a special education teacher at the Montauk School. Karen, Captain Rade’s wife of 49 years, retired as the director of the Montauk Library in 2014.  

“I love Johnny, his family, and I wish I had all of his fishing knowledge,” said Capt. Dave Aripotch, owner of the commercial dragger Caitlin Mairead, who has known Captain Rade since the early 1970s, when they did some gillnetting together. “It’s all of the little odds and ends that he knows. He catches fish like no other person I’ve ever seen. And he works as hard today as he did 30 years ago. Look at the great shape he is in. He is tireless and just a great man.”

When asked if he plans to fish on Sunday, the day he is to be honored, Captain Rade replied that “unless the weather is really bad, I’ll be out there. But I will pack my catch out and get to the ceremony in time. Don’t worry.”

Hail to the King.

On Monday afternoon I went down to the ocean beach and walked between Bridgehampton and Sagaponack. There was the usual bunch of beachgoers enjoying the sun, but what I was there for was to examine the wrack line left by recent high tides and storms, such as the tropical cyclone Chris that brushed our shore last weekend. 

I also went there because my wife, Julie, and a friend, Jean Held, had visited the same stretch of beach and came back with blue mussels and other lifeless critters on which were copious tiny blue mussels, no bigger than an eighth of an inch in size.

The ocean beach there is very wide all the way to Water Mill, thanks to a coastal taxing plan initiated by the Town of Southampton several years ago. There was a brownish wrack line marking the reach of an extra high tide stretching in both directions for more than a mile. I examined that line: Everything was dead, including the seaweed called knotted wrack, or Ascophyllum nodosum, which is a common brown alga that attaches to rocks and grows in the lower intertidal zone. For every foot of wrack line there were more than a thousand tiny mussels, new offspring of the year, apparently doing well until big waves washed them, and the shells and seaweed to which they were attached, away.

I presume they had washed west from Montauk, where the rocks start and where blue mussels do well in an average year. Along with the tiny bivalves were an assortment of other marine creatures, skimmer shells, skate egg cases, tiny crabs (perhaps Japanese shore crabs, which have established along Montauk’s rocky shores in the last 20 years), conch egg cases, moon snails, sand crabs, and many more, hardly identifiable. I walked to the east about two-quarters of a mile along the wrack line until I came to a least tern colony.

At 1,000 or so per foot, there could have been as many as two or three million dead blue mussels. 

No part of the wrack line was alive, except for three six-inch-high sea rockets with five or six fleshy green leaves each. It used to be the practice to rake beaches with mechanized equipment to make them more attractive to the people using them. It has been found, however, that sea wrack lines are often the starting point for new beach plant growth that accumulates sand and builds up the height of the beach. Raked beaches, on the other hand, lose sand with each large sea tide accompanied with surf. This wrack line was almost a week old and had not been left alone.

We wonder, though, if the rocky intertidal blue mussel population will suffer as a result of lower recruitment. Blue mussel beds can form the way oyster beds form. Just as larval oyster fry settle out on live oyster or empty shells, blue mussels similarly recruit free-swimming mussel larvae to add to the overall size of a bed. Blue mussels, Mytilus edulis, are as marketable as oysters and a favorite in restaurants that feature seafood. So, empty mussel shells should be left in situ, just as we are now saving our oyster shells and returning them to the shallow coastal waters.

The knotted wrack is enjoying a bumper crop year, just as a closely related brown alga, sargassum weed, is in Caribbean Sea waters and those of the Gulf of Mexico. It has been written that when Columbus came to the Caribbean in the late 1400s, there was very little of it around. It could be that the increased flux of nitrogen products into our seas from septics and fertilizers, as well as from the local vertebrate fauna, is favoring the growth of these seaweed species. 

In fact, just as local groups and institutions are increasing oyster stocks artificially to chow down on noxious marine plankton that are not only choking waterways but can be poisonous when ingested, the Cornell Cooperative Extension and other entities are starting underwater kelp farms. Kelp not only removes nutrients from the water column but also is an important food item in different human subcultures.

What would be better than kelp, however, for serving as a habitat for bay scallops and certain fish species, including winter flounder, is eelgrass, Zostera marina, which once grew so thick in local waters such as Accabonac Harbor that it would foul outboard motor props. But those days are gone. With global warming heating up our estuaries, we are not likely to see a return in the next few decades.

I like the water and the sand, and I’ve been a clammer, crabber, eeler, and fisher, but never a beachcomber. One can learn a lot by walking the shoreline periodically. One time it’s hundreds of washed up skimmers, another time it’s the small brownish shell of molted horseshoe crabs, then again, several types of kelp can be found, as well as swarming insects, sand crabs, bunker, and, even in the early fall, monarch butterflies and dragonflies. 

Think of it. The beach is an ecotone between the sea and the land, and it occurs all over the world in one form or another, but always with a dominant substrate of sand. What was odd on Monday afternoon was that I was the only one of 75 or so people parked at the end of Ocean Road walking the beach. A few were on the water, most were on the sand, lying on blankets or towels or sitting in portable deck chairs.

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

It’s turtle time. Female diamondback terrapins are coming ashore to lay eggs and female box turtles are walking into people’s yards to dig out a nest and lay their own. June is their month of choice; May is a close runner-up. If not disturbed or discovered by a raccoon, the eggs hatch at the end of August. The little turtles — not much bigger than a quarter but turtles in all other respects — dig themselves out. The baby diamondbacks head for the water, while the baby box turtles head for the nearest woods.

Karen Testa, the executive director of Turtle Rescue of the Hamptons, a 2012 spinoff from the Evenlyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue of the Hamptons, says she is getting 9 or 10 calls a day about turtles in need. During my last call to her facility in Jamesport on the North Fork, she got one of her “turtle-in-trouble” calls and had to break off the conversation to attend to a turtle in distress.

We have several turtles native to Long Island. The box turtle, while it may submerge itself in water to keep cool on the hottest days, is a bona fide terrestrial turtle. The others are aquatic. Of these, the diamondback is the only one that frequents the brackish waters and tributaries of the Peconic Estuary, Long Island Sound, and Great South Bay. The painted, stinkpot, snapping, marsh, and spotted turtles live in freshwater ponds and come on land only once a year to lay eggs. Of these, female snapping turtles make the longest journey, often crossing several roads before finding an appropriate spot for oviposition.

The snapping turtle is the largest of the aquatic turtles, weighing up to 50 pounds. If not handled correctly, it can give a serious bite. The painted turtle is the most common. The mud turtle is the rarest, and the only freshwater turtle on New York State’s endangered list. A few of us turtle lovers have also found the red-bellied turtle here, including a female laying eggs on the old railroad spur west of Long and Crooked Ponds in Bridgehampton. Red-bellieds have also been spotted at Little Northwest Creek in East Hampton and Sag Harbor and the small ponds in Montauk, including Money Pond west of the lighthouse. In turtle field guides this last turtle is listed as one of the rarest in America and is found along the coast from New Jersey south to Virginia, with a small population in coastal Massachusetts.

There are lots of introduced turtles, mainly those traded in pet shops such as the red-eared turtle, perhaps one of the most common ones to be rescued by Karen and her staff. I say rescued, but what that really means is removed unharmed from the ponds where they are found.

On June 10, Vicki Bustamante was on the North Fork cruising the roads between East Marion and Orient Point when she came upon several diamondback terrapins crossing in front of her. She photographed them. A day later, Helen Harrison and her husband, Roy Nicholson, were at the tip of Barcelona and photographed a diamondback climbing up a sandy bluff face well above the lay of the beach. Was this a female who had experienced northeasters and tropical cyclones in the past?

Like me, Alexander Miller, head of the Lionhead Beach Association in Springs west of Hog Creek, studied turtles as a boy, but his were upstate. Ten years ago he moved to Springs and has been keeping track of turtles, primarily box turtles, for the association ever since. He photographs every box turtle he comes upon. He also checks other local roads in Springs and Northwest, and says that the stretch of Three Mile Harbor-Hog Creek Road south of Camp Blue Bay is one of the most dangerous local roads for box turtle crossings. When he finds a road-killed box turtle he photographs its back and its underside; thus he can tell if it is one of those that he previously photographed.

As almost every schoolkid knows, turtles can be very long-lived. Alex has found some in his neighborhood as old as 35 years. John Treadwell Nichols, one of Long Island’s famous early naturalists, painted dates on the plastrons of box turtles living in the Mastic region in the very early 1900s. At least one of his turtles was discovered at the beginning of the 21st century, still alive. Apparently, box turtles rank right up there with parrots, elephants, Galapagos turtles, Greenland sharks, and humans as far as longevity is concerned.

Today’s drivers are often preoccupied with cellphone calls, music, conversation, or other diversions. A box turtle may have beaten a hare in a famous 2,000-year-old Greek race, but it is no match for an automobile. If you see one crossing in front of you, please stop. Other motorists may howl and toot their horns, but the turtle you save may be one of those rare centenarians.

An aside: The Lionhead Beach Association oversees a menagerie of rare animals and their habitats, and goes out of its way to protect them. It watches over not only box turtles but piping plovers, least terns, and an osprey nest that has been used annually ever since the first pole it sat on was erected by the East Hampton Town Natural Resources Department, Group for the South Fork, and the Nature Conservancy in 1995. Politicians run for office, and if elected, spend most of their time inside their offices. Neighbors and neighborhood groups are the real heroes and protectors of wildlife and nature.

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

Last week, other than taking my boat out at 4:30 a.m. on Saturday to for a quick check on my lobster traps (yes, I did capture enough for a dinner or two), I did not pick up a fishing rod. The reason was pretty simple, as I was hanging around the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills. 

While Shinnecock has the Atlantic Ocean to the south and Great Peconic Bay to the north, the course itself is pretty dry (notwithstanding the criticism the United States Golf Association took for the crusty greens witnessed by many frustrated players on Saturday afternoon), with only the sixth hole having a small pond on the right side of the fairway. Sadly, I’m pretty familiar with this hole, as I deposited a Titleist ball into that murky body of water last month on media day — one of the many horrible shots I had that fateful afternoon when I gave up keeping score. 

Had I wetted a line in that pond, I’m pretty confident those U.S.G.A. officials would not have appreciated my dunking of a worm or other lure while Phil Mickelson was teeing off. 

That said, I discovered last week, courtesy of the crack U.S.G.A. research team in the media center, that a good number of golfers also like to chill out on a stream, river, lake, bay, or ocean to go fishing. Many find it therapeutic after a round of golf or when their schedule affords them more time away from the course. Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo, Paul Azinger, Mark O’Meara, Davis Love III, and Kenny Perry are just a few of the high-profile golfers who have a passion for the sport. I don’t know if Tiger Woods dropped a line off the stern of his mega-yacht when it was docked in Sag Harbor last week, but I do know he has done his fair share of fly-fishing.

Rickie Fowler is another player who likes to fish. Fowler was busy last week. Besides playing at the Open, he also proposed marriage to his girlfriend on an ocean beach in Southampton. His fellow golfer Justin Thomas took a picture of Fowler proposing on his knee in the afternoon sun. I noticed no surf rod in Fowler’s hand, just a diamond ring. She said yes. Smart man, that Fowler. Best to stow the rods away until after the wedding. 

With all the hoopla surrounding the Open now behind us, I look forward to returning to the more leisurely pace of summer and spending a bit more time on my boat. I’m sure that’s the same for some of the professional golfers, who are still likely licking their wounds over their high scores at Shinnecock. Given how bad my golf game has been of late, a little solitude on the water may do me some good. 

At the Tackle Shop on Montauk Highway in Amagansett, the owner, Harvey Bennett, reported that the fishing remains solid. “Sammy’s Beach has a ton of bass and small blues are at Accabonac Harbor,” he said. “On the ocean beaches, some real big striped bass have been taken and at Georgica and near Maidstone. Porgies can be had at the dock in Fort Pond Bay in Montauk and fluke fishing is holding up well near Napeague. Also, don’t forget freshwater! Largemouth bass season is open and people are doing well in Hook Pond and Fort Pond.”

Bennett added that plenty of whales have shown up in recent days in the ocean off Amagansett. “Must be a lot of bait around for them to eat,” he said. 

Fresh off his cruise to France, Spain, and Portugal, Sebastian Gorgone at Mrs. Sam’s Bait and Tackle in East Hampton was glad to be back at his shop. “The cruise was fantastic and I had a great time,” he said. While he did not partake of any fishing overseas, Gorgone remarked that the local fishing action has been productive of late. “Fluking has been red hot at Cedar Point,” he said. “Porgies are going well in Cherry Harbor and some good striped bass action is happening on the beaches.”

“Very big bluefish are at Jessup’s Neck and the striped bass fishing is still good there, but it has started to slow down a bit,” said Ken Morse at Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor. Morse said that porgy fishing remains good and blowfish can still be had from the shoreline at Long Beach. He added that weakfish are at buoy 16 in Noyac Bay, while fluke fishing has been good in the deeper water near Bug Light in Orient. “Big bucktails tipped with Gulp! have been the hot ticket for fluke,” he added.

Out at Montauk, the Star Island Yacht Club held its 32nd annual shark tournament last weekend, and some truly large sharks were landed. The largest mako weighed in at 417 pounds and was taken on the Alexa Ann, while the biggest thresher was a 345-pounder taken by the crew of the Professional Cryer. The top blue shark, at 275 pounds, was caught on the Contender. 

Closer to Montauk Point, fishing has been decent. “Porgies have been the most solid fishery, with excellent fishing for mixed sizes all along the south side,” said Capt. Michael Potts of the Bluefin IV. “The sizes are even better east of the lighthouse when the tide is not running hard. As for stripers, they are there one day and somewhere else the next.”

Anglers are eagerly chomping at the bit for the start of black sea bass season. Starting on Saturday, recreational fishermen can retain three fish over 15 inches per day. However, commercial fishermen have faced a closure that took effect last Thursday and will remain in effect until the end of June. After that, the daily trip is set at 50 pounds and will remain in effect until further notice. 

For commercial porgy fishermen, effective July 1, the daily trip limit for scup is set at 600 pounds, and the trip limit will remain in effect until further notice.

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

Back in March, I set out my lobster traps for the first time in about nine years. With various work commitments behind me, I finally had enough free time to exhume my gear from its extended deep sleep on dry land. 

Dropping my menhaden-baited, weatherworn traps into the icy 42-degree water at one of my old favorite lobster haunts under the curious gaze of about a dozen seals proved to be extremely therapeutic. And according to my logbook, this particular underwater cluster of rubble, rocks, and boulders had produced very well in the past. It felt good to be back.

Hoping for a good haul the following week when I went back to check on them, I also took the time that morning to step back in my aft cockpit to exhale, reflect, and take in just how lucky I was to be in such surroundings under the cold late-winter sunshine. With nary another boat in sight in any direction, it was refreshing and mind-clearing. 

As I’ve stubbornly learned, as one advances in years, one usually gains a greater appreciation of the wonderful fortune we have to be alive and enjoy such simple times. Life seems to chug along faster with each passing year and we rarely take the time to pause and take in the view. In the few months since I first started soaking my traps, I’ve made it a point to savor every moment, no matter how many lobsters are landed.

That said, the catch, which has consisted mainly of nice hard shells, has been pretty good thus far. Despite a downward trend in the local lobster population for the past 15 years or so, I’ve been fortunate to have experienced more than my fair share of lobster dinners. I have also stockpiled several packages of frozen cooked meat that is now in my basement freezer ready to be enjoyed after the season closes in early September. 

In the meantime, I will continue to relish my leisurely cruise to the lobster grounds, about an hour each way, and to share my catch with my friends onshore. Needless to say, it’s easy to accumulate friends when lobster is offered.  

At the Tackle Shop in Amagansett, Harvey Bennett, an avid New York Yankees fan, was thrilled with how well his team has performed this season, despite the squad’s being swept by lowly Tampa over the weekend. Like last year, the veteran tackle proprietor has once again commenced his quest to secure both new and used baseball equipment to send to underprivileged youth in the Dominican Republic.

“I’m on the hunt for just about anything . . . hats, gloves, balls, bats, and uniforms,” he said on Monday morning, which also happened to be his birthday. This winter, Bennett shipped four large containers of baseball equipment to the country. “It was so gratifying to get pictures back from the kids wearing and using the equipment. I hope again we will get a good amount of donations this summer.” Game on.

Beyond the baseball diamond, Bennett remarked that the fishing has been solid. “Bass action along the beaches has been very consistent,” he said. “Porgies are everywhere and big, and a good amount of bluefish have shown up of late. Fluking has been good at Napeague, and don’t forget the freshwater fishing too. Lots of largemouth bass are in Fort Pond in Montauk.”

Over at Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor, Ken Morse spoke wide-eyed of the large striped bass that showed up in the ocean wash near Sagg Main Beach on Friday morning. “Those who were lucky enough to be there said it was the best striped bass fishing they had seen in over 20 years, with numerous fish between 20 and 45 pounds landed.” 

With large schools of menhaden around to feed on, a number of whales have been swimming close to the beach on the prowl for breakfast. “Some of the guys said that they could cast their lures beyond the feeding whales, they were that close,” Morse said. “The pictures I saw were amazing. I wished I was there.” As of Monday morning, the action for the large linesiders was still productive on the local beaches.

On Sunday evening, a similar feeding frenzy was witnessed by Morgan Nixon of East Hampton while at Long Beach on Noyac Bay, where small bluefish ganged up on hordes of blowfish that were pressed up tight against the shoreline trying to avoid being Sunday supper. The only good news for the blowfish was that no whales were around to also partake in the feast. 

At Mrs. Sam’s Bait and Tackle in East Hampton, Sebastian Gorgone was enthused about the blowfish action, too. As the fishing has been good, “I’ve been selling a lot of rigs lately,” he said. “The porgy fishing has been excellent just about everywhere, including Sammy’s Beach, where you can catch fish over two pounds from the shoreline. Also, there are a lot of small bluefish showing up and some big stripers have been taken in Three Mile Harbor.”

Saturday finally witnessed the opening of black sea bass season in New York waters, but the northeast breeze and heavy fog kept many boats tied up to the dock. Fluke fishing too, continues to witness its ups and downs, depending on the weather.

“We were able to get out this weekend and the fishing was decent,” said Kathy Vegessi of the Montauk party boat Lazybones. “A lot of short fluke are around, but the keeper fluke we are seeing are all nice-sized. Some sea bass were also taken on the trips.” The Bones sets sail daily at 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. 

Striped bass fishing at Montauk continues on the upswing and should crest with the full moon tonight. It’s only a matter of time before those jumbo-size stripers down the beach to the west settle into their summertime homes in the rips to the east of the Montauk Lighthouse.

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

Terry Sullivan called last week from Sag Harbor to tell me that the prickly pear cactus was in bloom along Long Beach Road’s south side. He also mentioned that PSEG has been putting up new utility poles. I’m a stone’s throw away, so I motored over and took a look. Indeed, at least 10 new poles had been erected, each with strange-colored horizontal members on top to which the electrical transmission wires were fastened. 

One of the two osprey nests along the road was active. The most easterly one was quiet. On a return trip ospreys sat on both nests. Hopefully the chicks survived the business of the new pole installations.

Today, I was told that PSEG, on recommendation from the Southampton Town Parks Department, had put a temporary hold on replacing more poles until the ospreys were finished and the young could fly. Southampton Town and the Villages of North Haven and Sag Harbor are hosting a renewable energy event on Saturday afternoon at Long Beach featuring electric cars and other non-carbon-fuel electrical devices, but far removed from the two nests. 

Apparently, almost six years later, PSEG is getting around to using some of the Federal Emergency Management Agency money accrued in the wake of Superstorm Sandy for “hardening” the electrical infrastructure. Ironically, perhaps, if Sag Harbor, North Haven, and Southampton Town have their way, PSEG will be removing said poles in favor of burying those same transmission lines between Noyac and North Haven. 

Revegetation would be part of the overall plan, but after viewing the spectacular yellow prickly pear flowers in bloom, I wonder if such a revegetation plan is warranted. In addition to the prickly pear, there is a host of other native plants along that dune-y stretch, most of which are flowering herbs and grasses, such as American beachgrass, oldfield toadflax, pine-barren sandwort, seaside goldenrod, common milkweed, pinweed, heather, and several natives. Among the native grasses growing there are little bluestem and broomsedge, cordgrass, and saltmarsh hay. Then come the shrubs — the beach plums, Virginia rose, bayberry, and the like — and my favorite plant of all, the hackberry tree, Celtis occidentalis, only one of which still exists there at the edge of the beach parking lot.

Long Beach used to be a narrow isthmus without a road between Noyac and North Haven, and before that, a tombolo, or a spit of land reaching out to the once-inlet from Noyac Bay to Sag Harbor Cove, separating it from the Village of North Haven. Upon his death, Clifford J. Foster left the spit to the Town of Southampton, and a few years back, the beach on Noyac Bay was renamed Foster Memorial Beach in his honor.

The prickly pear cactus, or devil’s tongue, is the only cactus species east of the Mississippi River. It is so scarce in Massachusetts that it is on the state’s endangered list. In Connecticut it is a plant of “special concern.” It ranges here and there throughout Long Island, but mostly sticks to low sandy sites with few trees and enjoys full sun. It ranks among the most beautiful of our wildflowers, but because of its thorny nature it is not widely planted as an ornamental.

The large yellow flowers ultimately become pulpy fruits, somewhat ovoid, and delicious to eat once separated from the spines. The leaf is welded to the stem, forming a flat paddle-shape appendage, and from its tip sprouts the flower, and then the fruit. One of these stem-leaves detached from the root and put into sandy soil with a little moisture takes almost immediately and in a few years becomes a whole patch. The few Native American kitchen middens that I have come across locally, such as one on the edge of Three Mile Harbor, have patches of prickly pear. Apparently, it was cultivated by local Indians. 

I snatched a single prickly pear leaf from Long Beach to take to a show-and-tell party held last summer at the headquarters of the Sag Harbor Historical Society on Main Street, just north of the Whaling Museum. I held it up and asked the audience if they knew what it was. A woman sitting in the front row said right off, “Opuntia humifusa,” uttering the scientific name flawlessly to my complete surprise. She was Sharone Einhorn, an ardent conservationist and a board member of the Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt.

When Julie and I lived in the foothills of Santa Barbara, Calif., my late mother-in-law, Grace Miglioratti, visited us frequently. When she did, she would walk down to the end of Montrose Place where we lived and snatch some prickly pears from a large opuntia of a different species and prepare them in such a way that they were delicious. She called them “figadins.” Strange name, I thought. That was 47 years ago. It was only yesterday that I looked it up in my Italian dictionary and found “fico d’india” or “fig from India.” Opuntia cacti grow all over the world and apparently someone from a city in Croatia across the Adriatic Sea from Italy gave the prickly pear that name a long time ago. A little further research told me that Opuntia ficus-indica, grown commercially in India, is most likely the origin of the Italian word for the prickly pear.

Someone before the turn of the century thought that the somewhat barren strip of land at Long Beach needed trees and a slew of Japanese pines, Pinus thunbergii, were planted. Hit by coastal storm after storm, in particular, during the last 10 years, these pines have mostly died. The isthmus is slowly returning to its original ecotype. As Karen Blumer, the author of “Long Island Native Plants for Landscaping,” espouses, leave it be and it will achieve its original form in time. No revegetation is needed. 

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

A new bird showed up in Montauk last week. It was a hummingbird, but not the one common in these parts, the ruby-throated hummingbird. This one had a black head. It turned out to be a black-throated hummingbird, a bird native to the Southwest. It was right at home feeding in the southwestern part of Hither Hills at one of Lois Markle’s hummingbird feeders. It hasn’t been back since.

At times a common bird on eastern Long Island can become a very unusual bird. Jean Held was surprised to see a male white-throated sparrow splashing around in her birdbath in eastern Sag Harbor. White-throated sparrows are common in the late fall, winter, and very early spring but go north to breed in the northern coniferous forest come mid-April. She left to get her camera, but when she got back to the window the bird was gone. 

The intense heat impacts the natural acts of summer. Insects fly less and birds sing less and go around with open beaks to try to keep cool. When it gets as hot as it’s been this week, there is a kind of hibernation that takes place called aestivation. Nature’s land creatures tend to just hang out, flying as little as possible, sitting around, almost as inactive as in hibernation.

The weather people tell us it will be gone by the weekend. If so, we can look forward to the resumption of a spurt of normal activity, perhaps, even catch-up activity. Songbirds will begin their second broods if the conditions are more favorable. Osprey chicks are half grown and will be flapping their wings in earnest by mid-July. Mid-July is also the time when the shorebirds begin arriving back from the tundra. They hang around here with the natives until it starts to get a little cool in September and then they go south.

 It’s been another good year for menhaden and the mature alewives of Big Fresh Pond, having bred in April, are ready to leave their breeding grounds to their scion, which will hang around for a few more months before heading out into North Sea Harbor come September. 

The ranks of black-crowned night herons have been growing around North Sea Harbor in the past several years. Adults and immature night herons perch in the trees along the stream as they did in April, when the breeding migration got underway. They get the alewives coming and going, and going.

Mosquitoes have been kind to us thus far, but after the next rain predicted for the coming weekend, that might change. Butterflies have been scarce. So far I’ve seen a swallowtail or two and several cabbage whites. I can’t remember a bad cabbage white year. Jean Held has some orange milkweed, also called butterfly weed, blooming in her yard. These bloom weeks ahead of the native milkweeds, which are the favorite host plants of monarch butterflies. At this writing, she reported seeing the first one of the year on one of her milkweed blooms. Monarchs might be making a comeback after several record-low breeding years.

Milkweeds, especially the common milkweed with its white blooms, have been increasing their numbers locally during the last couple of years, on road shoulders, in old fields, and in other weedy areas.

The spring wildflowers have blossomed and set fruit. You won’t find a bird’s-foot violet or a lupine in July. Now it is the time of the orange flowers, the tiger lilies and daylilies, and here and there in the woods, the very rare native Turk’s-cap lily. The deer come by my place and eat some of the daylily heads before they bloom, but always leave several for Julie and me to enjoy when they burst open. Maybe they know that we like them and are returning the feelings.

After the spate of orange flowers come the yellow goldenrods, of which there are a lot of native varieties. The first to bloom is the early goldenrod, Solidago juncea, the last is the seaside goldenrod, the one that returning monarchs and butterflies hit on while moving along the coast in September. In the middle of the goldenrod season you might be lucky enough to find a few New England blazing stars and the federally endangered sandplain gerardia, which is barely holding its own in Montauk and a few other grassy spots on Long Island.

The last group of native wildflowers to bloom is the asters, of which we also have many different species. With either blue or white flower clusters, they begin at the end of August and last into November. What I haven’t told you about are the several native members of the orchid family, which start blooming in early summer and are gone by August. However, I’m not at liberty to tell you where they may be found. There is a nasty rumor going around that the deer are eating them all. Not true, but in the past, a lot of them have been wiped out by those who mow the town, county, and state road shoulders.

As soon as this heat exhausts itself, I’ll be out looking around; there is always a surprise or two waiting in the wings. Why don’t you tag along?

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

It took longer than expected, but large striped bass, commonly referred to as cow bass among devoted anglers, finally showed up in huge numbers on the strawberry full moon last Thursday in Montauk waters. Fish in the 20-to-50-pound range were landed with great regularity and the bite was equally solid, whether you fished during the day or under the bright, moonlit night skies. It did not matter. The fish were there and they were hungry. Good fishing has continued since. And many folks are very happy and relieved.

“The fishing has been really good when the fish finally showed up,” said Capt. Michael Potts of the charter boat Blue Fin IV. “All methods are working to catch them, too. It’s great to see.”

“We had great bass fishing, with most of the fish in the 40-plus-pound range, with the largest weighing in at 48.5 pounds,” said Capt. Ken Hejducek of the charter boat My Joyce II. “It seemed like the early morning or night tides were the best for the bass.”

Prior to the striper invasion, bass fishing in Montauk was a struggle all spring and into the early summer. Where were they? Were they ever coming?

The lackluster fishing frustrated many seasoned captains. While catches west of Montauk excelled in the past two months, the self-proclaimed fishing capital of the world suffered a dire dearth of the highly prized fish.

The day before the jumbo-size linesiders showed up, a close friend of mine joined a group of colleagues for an all-day trip on a charter boat out of the famed port. Several hours of trolling umbrella rigs off Block Island produced four small bass for the six-person crew. Not good by most standards.

Even the other bass, black sea bass, were pretty much nonexistent that day with only a single keeper-size fish landed by the group. Days like that happen, but it also proved the theory that there truly is a big difference between fishing and catching. There are no guarantees when you wet a line. That’s why there are fish markets.

But the striped bass have finally settled into their summertime home off the historic Montauk Lighthouse. A clear sigh of relief could be heard across the various docks in the harbor. Life is good again in Montauk, and the smiles of those who pursue such quarry should continue for the foreseeable future. The striped bass are home again.

Montauk is not the only location populated with big stripers. South-facing ocean beaches from Southampton heading east continue to see solid action that commenced over two weeks ago.

“It has been really crazy around here,” said an overenthused Harvey Bennett, the veteran owner of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett. “There are lots of big striped bass feasting on schools of bunker. Amagansett has been hot with bass up to 45 pounds . . . while a 61-pound fish was taken near Mecox the other day. Amazing.”

Bennett said that the proliferation of the small, oily-fleshed bunker has also lured in a multitude of whales, porpoises, and even a few thresher sharks. “It seems like a repeat of last summer when we had all of these bunker up close to the beach,” he recalled. “I heard a thresher was landed near Maidstone, so we are bound to see some more caught as the waters continue to warm up. Fun times ahead for sure.”

Bennett also said that the fishing on the bay side is equally productive, albeit with smaller fish. “Porgies and blowfish are everywhere, and small stripers and cocktail blues are around big time at Sammy’s Beach and off Accabonac,” he said. “Plus, the fluke fishing has been excellent off of Napeague, too.”

In celebration of summer and the July 4th holiday, Bennett is having a sale on clam rakes, of which he has plenty in stock. Nothing better than some ice-cold littlenecks on the half shell to enjoy on a hot summer day. Don’t forget to buy a clam knife too. 

“Big bass are in the wash off Amagansett,” reported Sebastian Gorgone over at Mrs. Sam’s Bait and Tackle in East Hampton. “And while it is still good, many of the fish have now settled in at Montauk.” Gorgone was also enthused to see that many small bluefish have entered the local waterways on the bay, and that the porgy fishing continues to be intense in many nearby areas.

“With the warming waters, it’s best to focus on areas to the east where the water is cooler,” he suggested. “Fluke have been good off of Napeague and on the eastern side of Gardiner’s Island. And some nice sea bass are in the mix with them.”

“The bass bite at Montauk is fantastic,” repeated Ken Morse of Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor. “Plenty of big fish around.” As for the action closer to home, Morse said that porgy fishing remains good and that the weakfish bite at the Middle Grounds in Little Peconic Bay has been consistent. 

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

Eastern Long Island owes much of its natural history to the eastern deciduous forest, an ecological life zone that stretches from the grasslands of the Midwest to the Atlantic Coast, from northern Florida into southeastern Canada. Of course, there are huge differences from one part of this forest zone to the next, and from the southern part to the most northern part.

When the Laurentide ice sheet retreated and left Long Island in its wake, there were no humans residing here. Then came a very gradual change, from bare land to a boreal, tundra-like vegetative covering such as we find around the Arctic Circle today. Next, the vegetation progressed to shrubs and small trees — willows, birches, and such — followed by what is popularly called the northern coniferous forest, with hemlocks, larch, and various spruce dominating. Spruce were still extant as late as 1923, when the late naturalist-farmer Roy Latham described a stand of them on the north side of Orient. 

There were hemlocks and several birch species still extant in the early 1900s, but as a result of further warming, they were replaced by oak and hickory woods, followed by pitch pine and hardwoods, covering that part of Long Island now dominated by the Pine Barrens. This succession from one vegetation type to another quite different, and so on and so on, took place over the course of 15,000 years,

The rest of the United States, excepting Alaska and Hawaii, is made up of prairies, deserts, mountains with montane vegetation zones from bottom to top, and a little tropical forest in southern Florida. Then there are a bunch of different wetland types like salt marsh, thule, swamps, bogs and the like, and a variety of ponds and lakes with subaquatic and floating aquatic vegetation.

America’s vegetation types are not unlike those in the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, but in general quite different from those in the Southern Hemisphere, where tropical forests dominate, except in those areas occupied by savanna grasslands and deserts, like the Kalahari Desert in Africa.

Before colonial settlements began sprouting up in the middle 1660s, Long Island had the Pine Barrens, large grasslands such as the Hempstead Plains, brushy savannas, beach and dune vegetation, and a large variety of wetland types — everything from extensive salt marshes to tiny wet depressions dominated by insectivorous plants and cranberries, such as those that still exist on Napeague and in Montauk.

Paleobotanists have studied the changes in vegetation by taking cores from deep boggy kettleholes. The pollen from the deepest part of the cores can be identified to tundra and taiga forest plants, the topmost pollen to the more southern hardwoods and pitch pines.

Take the tupelo, for instance. It is quite common on Long Island in wet areas, but it is the same tupelo species that grows in Tupelo, Miss., known more as the birthplace of Elvis Presley than for its tree species. The southern red oak has established in Montauk, there are a few southern magnolias in Nassau County, persimmons on Gardiner’s Island and in East Hampton’s Northwest, lots of sweet gums (Liquidambar) in Queens and Nassau. As global warming continues, expect that a lot more southern tree species such as live oaks will establish here.

Of course, there are lots of variants of major ecological types. The dwarf pine barrens in Westhampton, off County Road 31 near the airport, are stunted but genetically different versions of normal pitch pines. For the last three years, Victoria Bustamante, a local native-plant grower, has been watching a group of the dwarf kind growing in pots in her greenhouse in Southampton Village. They are definitely much smaller than neighboring normal pitch pines planted from pine nuts in pots at the same time and grown under identical conditions. It may have been these dwarf Westhampton pitch pines that George Washington referred to as “ill-thriven” during his turn-of-the-18th-century trip to Montauk to site the lighthouse.

There is a remnant white pine forest flourishing in Northwest. Indeed, it will probably benefit further from the recent invasion of the southern pine borer beetle, which has killed so many of East Hampton’s pitch pines. When you drive along Bull Path, for example, you see almost no small pitch pines, but an abundance of white pine saplings. The groundwater they root in is an almost constant 55 degrees Fahrenheit. and is evidently substituting for the normal cooler ambient air temperatures in more northern regions where white pines grow in profusion, such as in Maine and northwestern Massachusetts.

Broadly speaking, there are a great many types of plant communities in East Hampton. One community that is also found on Block Island, Nantucket Island, and southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but is absent from the rest of the United States and Long Island, is “heathland,” dominated by shads, American holly, witch hazel, and shrubs of several different ericaceous species, as well as many different ferns. It is as thick to walk through as any tropical forest I’ve experienced.

There are lots of dune plants and grassland plants, as in the Montauk grasslands east of Lake Montauk, which in the early 1900s covered three-quarters of Montauk, including much of Hither Woods. The federally protected sandplain gerardia, rediscovered growing at Shadmoor in 1982, is just one of many native prairie species found in Montauk, along with the state-protected bushy rockrose, Helianthemum dumosum.

When “The Botany of Montauk” was written by Norman Taylor in 1923, there was only a handful of houses in that hamlet, as well as only a handful of exotic species. Now Montauk has as many Eurasian species as metropolitan New York, so many that the several rare species there are threatened with extinction by competition with the weedy species, including even that horrible invasive vine from Asia, kudzu. Such half-and-half habitats are now called “novel” ecotypes, for want of a more descriptive name.

In summary, the South Fork has several different plant habitats, including white pine forests, pitch pine-oak forests, deciduous hardwood forests, grasslands, shrub-savannas, and dune and beach vegetation zones, as well as a bunch of ecotonal combinations where two or more different types come into contact with each other. In addition, there are at least 10 different wetland vegetation types, including some dominated by myriophyllum and other interlopers, such that they are now in the “novel” ecotype category.

The central pitch pine maritime forest, now mostly protected, in Brookhaven, Riverhead, and western Southampton, is one of the jewels. The same pitch pine maritime forest type, during the last half of the 20th century, has reached the middle of the Napeague isthmus, and even reached the Walking Dunes of extreme western Montauk. Shortly after, the Central Pine Barrens Maritime Forest Preserve was created by an act of the New York State Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Mario Cuomo.

At the beginning of the 21st century there was an effort by the Group for the South Fork and the South Fork Groundwater Task Force to add these eastern South Fork pinelands to the already preserved central area, but the two towns — East Hampton, under the leadership of Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, and Southampton, led by Supervisor Pat Heaney — stifled it. As a result, these eastern pinelands have languished in never-never land ever since. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that the southern pine borer beetle is having the last word.

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