Rats, Schoolies, Gorillas, Cows
“Schoolie” bass were stacked up in one of the Gardiner’s Bay inlets the other morning toward the end of an outgoing tide. A Springs resident who shall remain nameless reported that he had decided on a whim to don a mask and snorkel and let the current take him along for a ride.
“It was like a reef. So many fish,” he said, describing the schoolies and showing their size with his hands spread about shoulder-width apart. “There were tons of porgies, too,” he said, which he saw as he made his way back through the inlet on the slack.
Anglers give all sorts of names to familiar fish based on their size or appearance. Schoolies, it seems, are a cut above “rat” bass — the really small ones. At the top end of the spectrum, you have “cows,” the big breeder linesiders, which many people who care about the resource believe are better off left alone.
Bluefish have their own size-related parlance. Snappers are the little ones, then there are “cocktail” blues (like a cocktail wiener or onion, perhaps?), and “gorillas” and “gators,” and so on. A big fluke — like the eight-pound family dinner treat that Annalee Ficorilli caught a week ago while on the Lazy Bones out of Montauk — is a “doormat,” for obvious reasons.
Small black sea bass are among the fluke and porgies in Gardiner’s Bay, with a few keeper “biscuits” above 14 inches in the mix. Bigger bass are all around the Montauk rips, and the south side rock piles are holding onto their hot-spot status for the bottom-fishing crowd.
“Fishing is absolutely fantastic right now,” Paul Apostolides of Paulie’s Tackle in Montauk said on Tuesday. There is a good fluke bite on at the Cartwright grounds with “jumbo” sea bass mixed in, he said. “The bass are hit-and-miss right now with some at the North Rip, Alaska, and the Elbow. Porgies are everywhere.”
Apostolides said that porgies can be caught by casting a hook rig baited with a sandworm right from the ocean beach off downtown Montauk. “One of the most fun things to do,” is how he described it. The beach porgies are huge, he said, well above the 10-inch limit and big enough to fillet.
Bluefish are on the north side of the Point for surfcasters to mess with at dusk and dawn, with some bass around. “There are plenty of fish, but not many players,” he said, something those who prefer a little solitude with their angling might care to note.
Apostolides said that there were tons of bait around and that snappers were starting to fatten up and could be caught in Fort Pond Bay, where there have been reports of mackerel taking sabiki rigs, which are tiny multiple-hook setups favored by the late-season herring fishing crowd.
David Kuperschmid, fishing solo in Gardiner’s Bay last week, said he caught a tinker mackerel while bottom fishing.
Harvey Bennett at the Tackle Shop in Amagansett has announced that the first person to walk in the shop wearing sandals and a “toga” and sporting a shaved head will get a free diamond jig on Saturday, Dalai Lama Day, at least on Bennett’s calendar.
The news from his shop is that an early run of false albacore passed through at the Ruins north and northwest of Gardiner’s Island last week. “Come Labor Day, it’s going to be full of them,” he said.
“Peanut” bunker, or young menhaden, are plentiful, with schools of them pelting waders’ ankles in the shallows. Clamming has been good, and is a fine way to spend a lazy day on the water.
Bass to 10 pounds are all over the ocean beaches, notably responding to offerings of clam bait, Bennett said, and porgies are plentiful and large. There are fluke at Napeague, though you might go a couple of days without any action, and then land a two-footer, he said.
In the coming week, he expected anglers to be chasing the last of the inshore fluke. “They always move this time of the year,” he said.