Part Man, Part Fish
George Knoblach turns 90 today. Like many a Montauk resident, George “discovered” this place during his family’s summer camping trips to Hither Hills State Park — only much earlier than most.
As a young man, he contracted polio, which left him paralyzed and confined to an iron lung for a time. His recovery was slow until his mother decided that water, and swimming, might be therapeutic. She was right.
“He became a fish,” in the words of Martin Pedersen, a longtime friend and fellow spearfisherman, who told me how Knoblach’s underwater skills were not confined to an astonishing ability to hold his breath and wield a speargun.
As a member of the Long Island Dolphins spearfishing club, he usually ended the season as “high hook,” or high spear in this case. An accomplished photographer above and below the surface, Knoblach developed underwater photographic techniques and equipment. He worked for Collins Engineers, an international underwater construction company, and he worked as an assistant to James Abbe, a photojournalist.
The sport that Knoblach pioneered in Montauk’s clear ocean water has become popular with a new generation of free divers who chase striped bass and other near-shore species, as well as tuna farther offshore, even traveling the world like surfers on safari in search of exotic species. Happy birthday, George, and thanks for the inspiration.
And, speaking of inspiration, I was sitting at Montauk’s Inlet Seafood restaurant on Sunday evening when a friend sitting on the stool beside me pulled out his smartphone and ordered it to conjure a photo taken after dark with a flash. It was a shot of the man’s neighbor, who had waited until the full moon rise to take his surf rod the few feet from his place in the Montauk Shores Condominium (a.k.a. trailer park) to the beach. He made one cast and hooked a 33-pound striped bass, the subject — along with the angler’s wide grin — of the photo.
Like the lush explosion of flowers, flowering trees, and everything else rooted to the ground after the hard winter just passed, it seems we are also blessed with an abundance of sea life. When unzipped, the striper in the photo was shown to have recently consumed a whole bunker, a species of oily prey that remain plentiful enough — despite the recent die-off farther west in the Peconic Estuary — to keep striped bass and bluefish feeding close at hand.
The bunker, and the full moon, might explain why the Montauk SurfMasters spring tournament ended in a wild flurry of big bass catches and near misses on Saturday. The day before, with the clock running down to the tournament’s conclusion, Mike Coppola brought a 38.86-pound striped bass to the scales at Paulie’s Tackle shop. The bass had eaten a Smokey Joe Superstrike darter lure that Coppola had cast around the rocks in one of Montauk’s moorland coves.
The fish pushed Wes O’Donnell’s 28-pounder off the leader board and moved Paul Pira into third place with the 36.1-pound bass caught on June 21. Gary Krist held onto first place with a 42.08 cow bass caught on June 12. Mary Ellen Kane and Bill Gardner made a late rush to the scales on Friday morning with 24.4 and 27.5-pound stripers respectively.
The moon and schools of bunker are also responsible for the schools of very large bluefish, which, in turn, will probably draw makos to the area in time for the Carl Darenberg Jr. Memorial Shark’s Eye no-kill shark tournament scheduled for July 18 and 19. There is still time for boats to enter at the Montauk Marine Basin.
Sunday marked the sloop Leilani’s first foray to the northeast side of Gardiner’s Island in search of porgies. The night before, her crew (that would be me and first-mate Kyle) spent the night at Leilani’s mooring on Lake Montauk where we, joined by the crew of our neighboring sailboat Astra, witnessed the re-enactment of the British attack on Fort McHenry; bright explosions way in the distance above New London, as well as Montauk’s official display off to the west. Unofficial sky bursts and accompanying percussions filled the sky from points surrounding the lake. Then the largest explosion of light, the full moon, rose in the southeastern sky, with Venus and Jupiter rising side by side to the west.
A steady southwest wind brought us to Gardiner’s Island the next day in company with Astra. We anchored, brought out the clam bait, rigged up, and proceeded to “bail” them at a rate of one porgy per minute for about 15 minutes until Kyle declared we’d caught our dinner with enough left over for porgy-loving friends. The wind increased in the afternoon and kept Leilani on her port rail back to Montauk.
Next day the fish were decapitated, cleaned, scaled, breaded with panko flour, and fried.
A happy star-spangled, moon-rising, southwest-wind-sailing, fish-catching, Fourth of July weekend. One to remember.