Outdoors

The plan was to head out on a 90-minute ride to Block Island for blackfish, sea bass, and codfish. When boats were able to get out in recent days, the action was good, especially for blackfish.

Last November I landed one bushel of scallops on opening day in and around Shelter Island Sound. The next day, however, I struggled to land barely a quarter bushel. East Hampton Town waters will open to scalloping in two weeks.

Blackfishing has been tough of late, “but bass, blues, and false albacore are still running well in Plum Gut,” Ken Morse of Tight Lines Tackle said, and anglers have experienced blitz-like fishing for striped bass around the Montauk Lighthouse.

November is the month when a dedicated group of citizen scientists begin to count birds as part of Project FeederWatch, a Cornell Lab of Ornithology program now in its 37th year. It’s simple. Go to feederwatch.org, pay $18, learn how to report your birds, get some swag that will help you make proper identifications, and you’re on the team.

“Local spots like the Sag Harbor bridge, Nichols Point, and the black spindle rock pile outside the breakwater have been producing of late,” Ken Morse of Tight Lines Tackle said from behind the counter of his new establishment in Southampton.

There is something creepy about cormorants. From most distances, they look black, with long thick necks, tails, and wings. In flight, they appear like black crosses. Against a cormorant, fish have no hope; the tip of their orange bill is hook-shaped, a perfect tool to capture over 250 species of fish. Soon those single black crosses will join to form sky-wide, shape-shifting patterns as they migrate away.

Before the water turns to ice here on the East End, the local fishing scene seems to be holding up just fine. Bass, bluefish, tuna, sea bass, porgies, and blackfish are hungry and on the feed.

The closing of Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor is most unfortunate. Small mom-and-pop, one-man businesses like Ken Morse’s establishment continue to be squeezed out because of high rents. It’s a troublesome trend that has become too frequent here.

It was a bad year to be a piping plover in East Hampton. In fact, the worst since at least 2008. While 32 pairs of plovers made East Hampton Town beaches their summer homes, only seven of those pairs were successful in fledging 15 young. Plovers in Southampton Town had a more successful summer.

“Yeah, the weather gods have not been cooperating of late,” Ken Morse at Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor said of the slow fishing. “The winds were relentless, but it appears things are finally going to calm down.”

Just as Tropical Storm Ophelia ushered out summer, Ken Morse, the man behind Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor, is moving out — to Southampton.

UPDATE: Those wishing to put their rakes to the test for the East Hampton Town Trustees’ Largest Clam Contest will have to wait a bit longer to dig for the winners in Lake Montauk, Napeague Harbor, Accabonac Harbor, Hog Creek, and Three Mile Harbor, as heavy rains have closed many areas to shellfishing and forced a second rescheduling of the annual event.