Sports

The popularity of fly-fishing exploded in Quebec when the movie “A River Runs Through It,” starring Brad Pitt, was released in 1992.

A number of East Hampton High School teams, boys soccer, boys volleyball, boys and girls cross-country, field hockey, and girls tennis among them, continued to be competitive last week, with the fall season nearing the midway mark.

Many of the 17 grandchildren of the late Harry de Leyer, the Dutch-born horseman who, with a former plow horse, Snowman, scaled the heights of the show-jumping world, have ridden, but only one, Jason de Leyer, one of Andre and Christine de Leyer’s twin sons, is riding and showing at the moment.

The oysters I received 16 months ago, which barely filled a half-pint container at that point, had grown by Sept. 21 to over five inches in length in many cases. After cleaning, culling, and sorting, I had well over a bushel basket of tasty bivalves.

Ordinarily, fall would not be considered a time for ice hockey, but East End kids are playing the sport pretty much the year round now, primarily in rinks up the Island, though there’s hope, according to Chris Minardi, that a regulation-size rink under a bubble may be put up in Calverton soon.

East Hampton High’s female swimming, cross-country, field hockey, tennis, and volleyball squads did well in homecoming contests.

A large group of tree swallows is called a gulp, which proves ornithologists are not without humor. Before the leaves change, gulps of swallows crowd our beaches. At Mecox Inlet, Sagaponack Pond, and the dunes that circle Napeague Harbor, hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of tree swallows collect.

The East Hampton High School boys soccer team looked good in its League IV opener versus Shoreham-Wading River and in its homecoming game with Stony Brook, and boys volleyball and boys cross-country each won their homecoming matchups.

The homecoming football game was all you’d want it to be, at least for a while, before Rocky Point proved to be the better team.

For those lovers of crab, it’s not too late to catch some. Good quantities can still be had over the next few weeks in various creeks, coves, and harbors, before they burrow in the mud and sand for their winter slumber.

William Huffman, a 29-year-old member of the Full Throttle team that’s based at Chelsea Piers in New York City, won the Steve Tarpinian Memorial Mighty Hamptons Triathlon at Noyac’s Long Beach Sunday morning, topping a field of 314 finishers. 

There are plenty of bluefish by Jessup’s Neck, porgy fishing is solid in many areas, including the east side of Gardiner’s Island. Sea bass too, are mixed in the catch in the deeper water. Farther offshore, tuna — bigeye, bluefin, and yellowfin — remain plentiful, and at the Cartwright grounds south of Montauk, as well as the area near the Block Island windmills, fluke fishing has been good of late.