Last Minute Gifts And Winter Sporting Opportunity

Happy Holidays, everyone.

If you are the significant other of a sportsman in search of last minute gift ideas, here’s some easy advice that will make every outdoorsman’s Christmas morning:

More boots, more gloves, more line, more bucktails.

Every hunter or fisherman can use another pair of boots and/or another pair of waterproof gloves. Anything from the Xtratuf or Muck lines of boots and shoes will find welcome feet. They run between $50 and $120 at most tackle shops.

Same with a pair of orange Atlas gloves. For $20, you can get your hunter or fisherman a gift that I guarantee you they need. What’s that, they have four pairs already? They still will be happy to get them.

Spools of braid are also always an easy stocking stuffer. The 300 yard spools of braid (the green PowerPro is the most popular around here) can be had for about $30 and will never go to waste. Spools of flourocarbon or monofilament leader are also a useful gift. A $10 spool in 30-pound and 50-pound test is a can’t miss bet.

Bucktails are easy. White, and a collection between 1 and 2 ounces, will be welcomed by any fisherman.

Take this shopping list to one of our local tackle shops: Haskell’s Bait & Tackle in Westhampton or East Quogue, East End B/T or Whitewater Outfitters in Hampton Bays, Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor, The Tackle Shop in Amagansett and Pauli’s Tackle or the Montauk Marine Basin ship store in Montauk. For line and leader material, K-Mart is a viable option, too, if you have really pushed it to the last minute and need something at 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

If you are a hardy outdoorsman, these have been heady days.

The main thrust of the waterfowl hunting season got off to a bang-up start with the powerful nor ’easter that swept through the area. Anyone with a field blind or pit or a sheltered nook who weathered the snow-sleet-gale on Thursday morning found a lot of birds fleeing the coastline.

Those of us with floating blinds on the coastline, where tides were set to be astronomically high even before the storm, had fewer prospects.

The little shot of early season chill and the blanket of snow and ice to our north has also started to push a few birds into town. Strong December snowstorms have been so rare in the last decade or so that it will be interesting to see if enough of a cold stretch follows it to kick the waterfowl migration back into its former patterns.

Best not to forget that sea ducks (scoters, eider and oldsquaw/long-tails) do not have their own limits anymore. They are counted as part of your 6-duck limit.

If you are tough as nails, but guns are not your thing, this is also burly-man weather at sea season and there are lots of hungry black sea bass and cod just waiting for a hook dripping with clam bellies to be handed to them.

The Shinnecock party boats, Hampton Lady and Shinnecock Star, are sailing to the 20-mile wrecks, and putting together some great catches of big knot-headed black sea bass with a few ling and hake and the occasional cod mixed in.

If you are intent on catching a cod, the Viking Fleet has been finding fair numbers of baccala on its trips out of Montauk this fall. The nearshore bite has faltered a bit since the big storm, but the Viking will continue sailing after the new year in search of a new body of fish that will hopefully give everyone a chance to escape the COVID-19 misery (and possibly lockdowns).