The Lt. Joseph J. Theinert 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament will be played at 1 p.m. on Saturday at the Shelter Island School to benefit the Lt. Joseph J. Theinert Memorial Fund, which supports programs for military families and veterans in need.

    Lieutenant Theinert, who grew up in Sag Harbor and on Shelter Island, once played the sport at the Shelter Island School, wearing the number 15 jersey, which was retired last year. He was killed in action in Afghanistan on June 4, 2010.

    Jimbo Theinert, one of his brothers, said last Thursday that the fund-raiser is “lighthearted and fun, as was Joe.” Held on Thanksgiving weekend, as it has been for the past three years, it brings people back for a positive experience, he said.

    And then there’s the competition. This year, Jimbo Theinert, who is now a teacher at the school, said he had recruited two top freshmen and brought back key players to his team, the Wrenches. He is its co-captain with John Goodleaf, who he said came up with the nickname Joe the Wrench for Lieutenant Theinert.

    The lieutenant’s high school coach, Mike Mundy, said he remembered his outstanding work ethic. “He was tenacious in everything he did . . . he never gave up, even if we were down by 20.” He recalled that Lieutenant Theinert’s last game at the school was his best.

    Tournament teams consist of three to seven players, and each must include at least one female and one student from any high school.

    Kelsey McGayhey, who was an all-county basketball player at the Shelter Island School last year, scoring more than 1,000 points in her career and having her jersey retired, has offered her services, though it has yet to be announced what lucky team will get her.

    “It is important to keep members on the same team from year to year,” Jimbo Theinert said, as it adds to the rivalry. Lieutenant Theinert’s family is split up among a few teams, he said, with his stepfather, Col. Frank Kestler, who has just returned from Afghanistan, playing on a team with his stepbrothers and stepsister. His brother Billy is on another team with some of Lieutenant Theinert’s close friends.

    Jimbo Theinert is getting younger kids from Shelter Island involved too. He said the tournament is one of the better events “for them to get to know Joe’s friends and family in a less serious light.”

    Some of the lieutenant’s friends whom he went to college with in Albany will also play, as will Dustin Mulcahy of Shelter Island, who is serving in the Army and stationed at Fort Drum, where Lieutenant Theinert also spent time.

    Carla Cadzin, a co-founder and organizer of the tournament, said there is a team from Greenport to look out for, and another called Jameson All Around Every Round, named in remembrance of the lieutenant.

    For some players, fashion takes precedence over skills — pink tutus are expected to be worn by a team called Pink Warrior Ninjas.

    New this year is the ability to play from anywhere in the world. The I Played for Joey part of the tourney offers participation and the chance to donate online.

    In addition to the basketball action, there will be snacks and a raffle contest, with prizes including gift certificates to Sweet Tomato’s on Shelter Island and the Wolffer Estate Vineyard in Sagaponack. Airbrushed tattoos will be offered in return for donations to the cause, as will memorial T-shirts, locally designed and printed this year by Cat Brigham of Shelter Island Clothing Company.

    Holding the tournament around the holiday season gives family and friends a new tradition during a time that can be hard for many people. “The event is about Joe,” said Jimbo Theinert, “the early years, the fun memories, the simple things in life. . . . He is a large part of it in a very positive way.”

   When this writer recalled that John Conner ran the Fifth Avenue Mile in 4 minutes and 40 seconds at the age of 50, he was corrected by the interviewee: “Four-forty point one.”

    That’s by way of saying that runners remember their times, and Conner, who’s bearing down on his 78th birthday come February, and who has professed the desire to live to 200, has many exceedingly good times — including three world records and nine national championships — to remember.

    One of the best age-group milers and half-milers in the world in his 50s and 60s, his running career, abetted by credit card air miles that once totaled one million, was cut short about 11 years ago when a truck struck him from behind as he was cycling in East Hampton Village.

    Undaunted by a shattered hip, which was put back together with screws and flanges by one of the country’s best orthopedic surgeons, he became a top age-group triathlete, and though he now walks with a cane, he continues to walk, swim, and bike — early in the mornings before the sun comes up.

    In 1990, at the age of 55, he set world records for 55-to-59-year-old runners in the 800 (2:10.62) and mile (4:53.3) races — times that most high school runners would envy — and followed up in 1995 with a world record in the 1,500.

    For the past five years, Conner, a retired general contractor who built affordable houses here for many East Hampton families, and who, before that, was the director of Head Start, and who, before that, was an artist, winning “best in show” at Guild Hall in 1962, has been coaching a group of serious runners, young and old, at East Hampton High School’s track.

    Under his watchful eye, and as the result of his methodical workouts designed to strengthen hearts and lungs and muscles, all have improved their times, whether they’re 16 or 64, whether their race is the marathon or the mile.

    “Glenn Cunningham, a great miler of the ’40s, once said,” said Conner, with a meaningful smile, “ ‘Running is you against yourself . . . the cruelest of competitors.’ ”

    “In other words, you can take yourself to the limit and then you can go further! Running is a struggle, it’s the Agon — that’s the Greek word for it. All the speed work, all the cardiovascular work, comes down to this: You want to get into as much stress as you can handle and then equalize things so you have enough oxygen to remove the lactic acid — which is what makes you tired — and thus continue running at a high level. If you’re in shape, you can, in the shorter distances, continue at your pace despite oxygen debt.”

    “What’s oxygen debt?” He rose from his chair to explain. “It’s what they call the bear grabbing you. It’s when lactic acid takes over. You’re 50 yards away from the finish line and you’re freezing up. All of a sudden, you can hardly lift your knees anymore and your head lolls back and you’re gasping for air. That’s oxygen debt.”

    When asked if he’d been a world champion, Conner replied, “No, I was never a world champion — I was a world record holder. There’s a difference. It’s much harder to win a world championship. At a world championship [he’s contended in them in Finland, Australia, Italy, and Canada] you’ve got eight great, great, great fucking runners on the line and all of them have a plan, which to beat you! It’s a horse race.”

    The last national championships he’d won had been in 1995 in Reno, Nev. “I won the 800 and the 1,500 there. Cliff Pauling, my nemesis — we battled each other for 15 years — would beat me in the 400, I’d beat him in the mile, and the 800 was always a tossup — wouldn’t line up against me in the 800 that time. . . . To win the 800, you need speed, stamina, you can’t make a mistake, and you need a little luck.”

    “To make a runner,” Conner continued, “takes five years, sometimes longer. I tell the kids who come to my workouts that I’m not out to make them faster, I’m out to make them stronger. . . . When the heart is ‘juicier,’ it can pump 20 quarts of blood rather than 12; new capillaries are opening up when you exercise, you’re bringing more ‘gas,’ more glucose and oxygen to the muscles. . . .”

    And then, he said, there was the spiritual side (the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, what you will). “Before Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1954, everyone was saying it never could be done, that it would take too much energy, create too much lactic acid, and that the body couldn’t do it. Bannister was a wonderful scientist. He knew he could do three laps in three minutes and he told himself not to think about the fourth. In that fourth lap he was beyond the physical, in a different realm. That’s where the theory of oxygen debt and the ability to perform at a high level despite it came from.”

    “There’s a saying, ‘The body will remember.’ I remember it from my high school days at Delbarton. My coach was a Benedictine monk. He told me that if I got into good shape I could do more. . . . The body yearns for exercise. It’s amazing what it can do. I’ve tried to get the kids to become their own GPS, to know what it is to run at a six-minute-per-mile pace, to hold their form, and then, when they’re heading toward the line to take on an attitude, to say to themselves as someone’s coming up on their shoulder, ‘Who’s this intruder?!’ And then to run through the line. You gotta win the struggle against yourself, you gotta beat the Agon!”

Thursday, November 8

BOYS SOCCER, first round county Class A tournament, Miller Place at East Hampton, 2 p.m.

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, first round Division II tournament, East Hampton at Sayville, 5 p.m.

Friday, November 9

BOYS SOCCER, county Class A semifinal, Eastport-Shoreham winner vs. East Hampton-Miller Place winner, site of higher seed, 2 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, county Class B championship game, site of higher seed, 4 p.m.

Saturday, November 10

FOOTBALL, first round Division IV playoffs, East Hampton at Babylon, 1 p.m.

GIRLS SWIMMING, East Hampton at county meet, Suffolk Community College-Brentwood, 2 p.m.

Sunday, November 11

BOYS SOCCER, county Class A championship game, Dowling College, 5 p.m.

   It is no surprise that Davis Eames, the 12-year-old champion A.T.V. rider, and Julie Baum’s 7-year-old son, Liam, who suffers from an aggressive form of epilepsy, have teamed up, Baum said during a telephone conversation Monday.

    “Each of them has an ability to touch other people’s hearts — they’re empathic,” Baum said. “They have the gift of bringing people together. Neither of them puts anyone down — they see through differences. This gift is not common. If it were, the world would be a far better place.”

    Liam, “the Mayor of Springs School,” according to his mother, suffered a tonic-clonic [formerly grand mal] seizure at the Eameses’ house on a play date a while ago, an experience that profoundly affected Davis, who has dedicated her young racing career to finding a cure for the disease Liam suffers from, Dravet’s Syndrome.

    At all of her races henceforth, she’ll ask the attendees to make contributions to the Dravet Syndrome Foundation, and plans to sell some of her myriad trophies so that she can donate to the foundation as well.

    “It’s a genetic mutation epilepsy,” said Baum. “He’s had it since he was 5 months old, and yet, while a seizure can occur at any time, he plays baseball and basketball. . . . He’s said to me, ‘Mom, I have to keep trying.’ ”

    “We’ve been having some success with a drug from France, Stiripentol,” she continued. “The disease is tricky, very tenacious, and it can be catastrophic. There’s always a chance he can have a seizure, but the kid keeps on going! He’s one of the sweetest kids. No wonder he and Davis, who’s so engaged in life, and who sees in Liam all of his potential, connected.”

    Melissa Eames, Davis’s mother, said this week that donations to the Dravet Syndrome Foundation can be made in Davis’s name at DavisAgainstDravet. com.v

    About 10 years ago, Leif Hope, the Artists-Writers Softball Game’s impresario, had the idea for an exhibition at Guild Hall of the works of the myriad artists and writers who had played in this annual agon over the years.

    “At first, I was offered a back room,” said Hope during a conversation Monday. “Now, they’re giving us the main gallery, and the show will run from June 15 to July 27.”

    Hope had more or less given up on the idea when Sherrye Henry, who for 17 years had a WOR talk show, Deb McEneaney, and Walter Bernard picked up the ball and ran with it. “Elena Prohaska is also working on this,” said Hope, who added that he is reasonably sure the $25,000 to $40,000 needed to underwrite the show can be raised.

    “We’re going to try to exhibit the artwork and books of as many of those who’ve played in The Game as we can,” he said.

    The list is long, very long, and harks back to The Game’s origins some 60-plus years ago when it was contested by such art world luminaries as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline in the front yard of the sculptor Wilfrid Zogbaum’s house in Springs.

   Of those early days, Philip Pavia, a slugging sculptor to whom the first disguised grapefruit was served up by Kline, once said, “We played like the Brooklyn Dodgers. You know, a runner on first and second and somebody hits a home run and passes the ones ahead of him. Girls played, lots of them, but they didn’t care. They ran backwards sometimes. It was the start of the feminist movement!”

   “At first, my idea was to feature the works of all the artists who’ve played, but then I thought I should include the writers too,” said Hope. “They’re the ones after all who have all the celebrity: Kurt Vonnegut, John Irving, Irwin Shaw, George Plimpton, Willie Morris, Jay McInerney, Walter Isaacson, Peter Maas, Avery Corman, Wilfrid Sheed, Richard Reeves . . . people like that.”

   The artists whose works may be displayed — aside from the above-named — presumably include Esteban Vicente, Jimmy Ernst, Eric Ernst, Syd Solomon, Joan Mitchell, Herman Cherry, John Alexander, Paul Davis, Dan Christensen, Elwood Howell, Randy Rosenthal, Billy Hofmann, and Hope himself.

   Tortorella Pools as of Oct. 24 — no games were played Oct. 31 because of hurricane outages — led the East Hampton Wednesday evening 7-on-7 men’s soccer league going into this week’s matchups.

    Maidstone Market, which won its ninth straight playoff championship in August by defeating Tortorella 3-1 in the final, came into the week in second place, with a 4-2 record. Tortorella was 5-0-1.

    In a rematch of the 2012 spring final on Sept. 26, Tortorella handed the Market a 3-1 defeat. In his Web site report of that game, Leslie Czeladko said Maidstone had outplayed his team in the first half, although it was Tortorella that scored first, the result of a penalty kick awarded after Alex Meza, Maidstone’s keeper, had fouled Oscar Reinoso in the box. Meza drew a yellow card from the referee, Alex Ramirez, on the play, and was sent to the sidelines for two minutes, leaving his replacement, Carlos Torres, to defend against the penalty kick, which was taken by Eddie Lopez. Lopez buried the shot, treating his team, which had largely been on the defensive in the early going, to a 1-0 lead.

    Cesar Correa tied it at 1-1 for Maidstone before the half was over, converting a cross from Antonio Padilla, who had taken the ball to the endline. Tortorella’s goalie, Craig Caiazca, “made several great saves in the first half,” according to Czeladko, and that was the sole goal that he was to allow that night.

    It was Tortorella that did the attacking in the second frame. Juan Olvera set up his team’s second goal, racing with the ball down a sideline before sending a high cross toward the far post. Daniel Salazar couldn’t quite catch up with it, but Rodolfo Marin, a defender who had been trailing the play, did for a 2-1 Tortorella lead.

    Meza, who plays aggressively, soon after found himself out of position as he and Salazar leapt for a high-bounding ball that eluded both of them and wound up on the feet of Marin. Marin fed Salazar, who, after beating two defenders, capped the scoring as he drilled a shot into Maidstone’s nets.

    Adding insult to injury, the Market was edged 1-0 by F.C. Tuxpan, the league’s fifth-place team, on Oct. 24. It was do-or-die for Tuxpan, whose first win it was.

    Czeladko said, “It looked as if the match would end in a draw, but Tuxpan’s Luis Rivera scored on a counter attack that ended with the ball making its way from Rivera to Alberto Larios back to Rivera, whose chip shot beat the onrushing Alex Meza from about three yards out.”

    Maidstone wound up playing a man down when Cesar Correa was ejected by Ramirez following a foul in Tuxpan’s box and a profane protest.

    Tortorella also lost that night, by a score of 1-0 to Bateman Painting, the fourth-place team.

    Czeladko said: “From the start, both sides were attacking well, but Tortorella had a hard time moving the ball by Bateman’s defenders.”

    “Bateman had a chance to score when Jon Lizano stole the ball from Cristian Munoz, but Munoz shot over the crossbar from about 10 yards out.”

    “Bateman had another chance when it was awarded a direct kick near the box. Juan Zuluaga, facing a ‘wall’ of defenders, kicked wide of them to the right, the ball caroming to the left off a Tortorella defender, David Rodriguez. Caiazca, Tortorella’s keeper, punched the ball back to the right where a defender cleared it — a pinball skirmish that ruined a great chance for Bateman.”

    “It was looking as if the match would end up in a draw, but toward the end of regulation, Bateman’s Julian Munoz got the ball near midfield, raced with it into the goalie box and, from five yards out, fired a shot that beat Caiazca into the far corner.”

    Going into this week, there were 12 games left to play — last night, Monday, and Nov. 19 and 21 — before the playoff semifinals on Nov. 26 and the championship game on Nov. 28.

    In the “Golden Boot” competition, Maidstone’s Gehider Garcia led as of earlier this week with 6 goals and 1 assist. Tortorella’s Eddie Lopez was second, with 4 goals and 2 assists. Cesar Galea of 75 Main, Mario Olaya of Maidstone, and Oscar Reinoso of Tortorella, each had 3 goals. Maidstone’s Andy Gonzales had 2.

   When a visitor to Jeff and Melissa Eames’s house in Springs the other day noted that no other competitors could be seen in the photos of their 12-year-old champion Quad-racing daughter, Davis, they had to acknowledge that that was because Davis, who’s been riding A.T.V.s since she was 4 and racing them since the age of 6, invariably left her peers in the dust.

    “She won all three New England A.T.V. championships this past season,” said Jeff Eames. “In the 70 c.c., 90 c.c., and 90 Mod classes. That was her goal. Last year, she won the 90 C.V.T. and 90 Mod championships, but no one has ever won three championships in one season before. Actually, I didn’t even think it was possible.”

    The justifiably proud father and his slim 5-foot-2-inch, red-haired daughter had been clearing driveways earlier that morning, and sawdust clung to Davis’s jeans and Dustin Wimmer hoodie as she splayed out on one of the living room couches, alternately playing with the family’s lively little dogs, Chase and Fudge, with Hurricane, the abandoned kitten she’d rescued at the Hurricane Hills MX track in Clifford, Pa., and her yellow lizard, GMX, who, she said, had only bitten her once, when she had first picked her up at Pet Hampton. “She likes to eat crickets . . . she peed on my friend Kai, twice.”

    Asked for a highlight from the season just past, Jeff began, “At her last race, at Hurricane Hills, the national 90 Mod, 90 C.V.T., and 70 C.V.T. champions, whose season had ended a month earlier, entered the New England A.T.V. race with Davis.”

    “Yeah,” he said, in reply to a question, “they were all boys. Two were older than Davis and one was younger. Before the race began, they were playing mind games, talking trash, you could say, and I could see it was getting to her; she was wound up. Her coach, Dustin Wimmer, who was the national pro champ in ’08 and ’09 and was a top-level rider for Team Suzuki, told her simply to race her race.”

    “The stars must have been aligned,” Davis’s father continued. “She was second in the hole shot, behind one of the national champs, right on his butt. They went back and forth in the first lap, and in the second she took over and led the rest of the way. She’s got the heart of a lion.”

    “Later, the father of one of the national champs gave her full credit — there was no animosity — and asked why she didn’t race the national circuit. I said why bother traveling all over the country when we knew, based on what we’d just seen, how she would do.”

    While that story attested to his elder daughter’s grit, as did the fact that she had to be carried to the family’s R.V. utterly exhausted after racing 12 laps in 100-plus-degree heat at the New Jersey Raceway Park, the following spoke to her heart:

    “We were at Twister Valley in Fort Plain, N.Y., and Davis had torched everyone in the 70, 90, and 90 Mod races the first day. But all of us could see the track would be nothing but mud the next day because of heavy rains. No one wanted to muddy their bikes. We all agreed not to race.”

    “The next morning, one boy showed up at the line, on a spotless 90 C.V.T. Davis saw him and asked if she could give him the first-place trophy. We all said sure, and she walked up to him and, holding out the trophy, said, ‘Now you don’t have to get your bike all muddy.’ She became his hero with that gesture. She has so many trophies [upstairs, downstairs, and in the family’s garage] of her own. It shows her heart.”

    Davis and her younger sister, Devyn, who, on emerging from beneath a box she was playing in, said brightly, when a visitor asked how old she was, “Devyn’s 7!” are students at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton. Davis, who’s in the older group — Hayground’s eldest students are 13 — has, as part of her studies, been apprenticing with Nadia Ernestus, “the Hamptons Health Coach,” and, under the 537 Productions banner (537 is her racing number) has made several short films with her, “Hug a Farmer,” which is on the “Davis DareDevil” YouTube channel, being one.

    Her interests, she said, in answer to a question, were varied enough to keep her happy during the off-season. David Lys of Weekend Warriors, a fellow Springs resident, is her trainer, though she too has come up with conditioning ideas on her own. Asked if she wanted to become a pro — she looks up to Dustin Wimmer, who’s 25, as an older brother — Davis said, “Unh huh,” as if there were no need to ask.

    Did she play other sports? No, she said, because she didn’t want to get hurt. In her six-year career, she’s only flipped once, and once she hurt her thumb.

    “Next year, she’s moving up to the 300s,” said Davis’s father, who’s her chief mechanic. “We’re taking the engine from a C.F.R. 250 Honda dirt bike and putting it into a Quad. It should be ready by Jan. 14. So, beginning in April, she’ll be racing in the 90 Mod and 300 classes. She’ll be too old for the 70s. We might go to a national race in Georgia in March just to see how she does. . . . She’ll have plenty of competition in the 300s. I’ve told her to take it easy, at least in the first half of the season, but she said to me, ‘Dad, I’m not taking it easy!’ ”

    “I’ve told them [her fellow motocross competitors], ‘Watch out — I’m coming!’ ” said Davis as, with one foot on the ground, she revved up the 250, which her father had rolled out from the garage, and sped off across the front yard.

Friday, November 16

GIRLS SWIMMING, state meet, Ithaca College, also Saturday.

Saturday, November 17

BOYS SOCCER, state Class A final, Middletown High School, Middletown, time to be announced.

Thursday, November 22

RUNNING,  3 and 6-mile Turkey Trot races around Fort Pond, co-sponsored by the East Hampton Town Parks and Recreation Department and Keeshan Realty, The Circle, Montauk, 10 and 10:10 a.m., registration from 8 to 9:30.

October 22, 1987

    It was the Jamie Grubb and Walter Casiel show Saturday at LaSalle Military Academy’s fir-lined football field as the East Hampton High School quarterback and its wide receiver combined on three touchdown pass plays, of 15, 6, and 35 yards, to win the League Seven game 20-6.

    . . . Afterward, Ted Meyer, Bonac’s coach, said that Bill Barbour Jr., David DiSunno, Nick Algios, and Jason Menu, all linemen, had played solidly on defense and offense.

    Pat Bistrian, the junior number-one on the East Hampton-Pierson High School golf team, whose season ended this week, placed fourth, with a 77, in Friday’s Conference Four tournament played at Swan Lake Country Club in Manorville.

    The East Hampton-Pierson High School cross-country team clinched the League Seven title Tuesday by defeating Westhampton 19-42 at Sag Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park. The win capped an undefeated season for East Hampton-Pierson, at 6-0.

October 29, 1987

    The Bonackers went for it the first time they had the ball in Saturday’s high school football game here with Babylon: Jamie Grubb, the quarterback, pitched to Walter Casiel, the wide receiver, who, in turn, passed long for Anthony Miller, who had come out of the backfield. But the razzle-dazzler fizzled as a Babylon defender intercepted on his team’s 38-yard line.

    And so it went that afternoon as the East Hampton High School football team bowed to its tough League Six opponent, 27-0.

    . . . The last time an East Hampton team upended the Panthers was in 1982, by the score of 24-21.

    Several of the Montauk Rugby Club’s players, including Frank Bistrian, Keith and Kevin Bunce, and Mike Toohey, “the best scrum half in the New York area,” according to the club’s founder, Charlie Whitmore, were planning to try out yesterday for the all-Metropolitan side in New York City.

    David Brauer won the 14-mile Dock cycling race in Montauk on Sunday in 32 minutes and 5 seconds. . . . It was the fifth time that Brauer has won the race in six years.

November 5, 1987

    Among the 22,000 New York City marathoners Sunday were at least several local participants who came away with buoyed spirits, and bodies that apparently were not unduly affected by the rigorous 26.2-mile ordeal.

    “It was like being in the Super Bowl,” said Tim Fitzpatrick, 26, who finished 918th, in 2 hours, 58 minutes, and 16 seconds.

    . . . It was the first marathon for Fitzpatrick, who only began running competitively a little more than a year ago. Though he had never raced farther than 6.2 miles, he nevertheless set out to break three hours. “I thought he was out of his mind,” said Johanna Pfund, 32, of Montauk, who did a cartwheel at the finish line.

    . . . “After doing something like this you know you can do whatever it is you want to do,” said Fitzpatrick.

    With summer prey species flung hither and yon by Hurricane Sandy and the subsequent northeaster, striped bass have been dining on crabs, at least that’s what dockside post mortems have been revealing.

    The usual bottom-feeding crab eaters seem to be making up for whatever lost time occurred during the height of Sandy. Blackfish fishing has been productive in recent days. As for stripers in these waning weeks of the season, gannets have been seen diving presumably into schools of herring, high on the striped bass menu this time of year, a promising sign.

    Point is, bass are still around, most small by all accounts, but with fish in the teens mixed in with bluefish, according to Fred Kalkstein, an organizer of the Montauk SurfMasters tournament for striped bass caught from the beach. Mike Cappola, a contender and former tournament winner, reported catching three teen-size fish on Saturday night.

    He also observed the “dusty” look of the water, most likely the result of the fine silt or clay licked from Montauk’s earthen bluffs during the back-to-back storms.

    According to Kalkstein, Atilla Ozturk, another SurfMasters contender, turned googin (fisherman klutz) on Sunday night while fishing on the north side of Montauk Point. Atilla said the water was beautiful, fishy. He was casting and failed to notice he’d lassoed the rod tip, a not-uncommon occurrence, when casting.

    After casting his lure to the wind with no takers for some time, he finally got “a strong bite,” but as usually happens with a looped rod tip, the fish broke off. In the old days, the scene would be acted out on stage at the tournament finale dinner. This year it will be held on Dec. 8 at Gurney’s Inn. Who knows, Ozturk might re-enact the scene if prompted.

    As though the storms left a curse behind, Sam Doughty, a veteran fisherman, was fishing the North Bar, again north of Montauk Point, with a good-luck plug he’d found on the beach, one on which he could always depend for a fish when other lures failed. He reported catching a bass he estimated to be in the 40-pound range — “a big whack,” according to Kalkstein’s version of the story.

The fish turned and came straight to shore. Doughty reeled and reeled to keep tension on the line, the fish turned again and popped it. An examination of the terminal end showed where the fish’s gill plate must have worked through the leader, and Doughy lost his good-luck plug. Two veteran casters, two victorious fish.

    Kathy Vegessi, shoreside support for the Lazy Bones party boat, reported “red hot” striped bass fishing on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning, and “with a lot of throwbacks of undersized fish.” Lazy Bones went fishing post-storm after its dock in front of Salivar’s and Swallow East restaurants was repaired.

    Blackfish angling continues to be productive, with the West Lake Marina reporting an exceptional fish being caught by Hugh Chancey off Block Island over the weekend. The big tautog weighed 13.35 pounds. West Lake also reported steady striped bass fishing from boats working the North Rips out to the Midway spot. Eels were doing the trick.

    A reminder that the state bow season for deer is now under way and will continue until Dec. 31. The shotgun season will run from Jan. 7 through 31, weekdays only. A three-day turkey hunt will begin on Saturday and run through Wednesday. The bag limit is one bird of either sex per day.

 Russell Drumm

After the storms, birds feasted on floating moon snails that had been pounded from their shells.”