Striped Bass Vanishing Act

Boy, do I wish I could report that a lot has changed on the fishing scene since two weeks ago. But alas, I cannot.

Since the last installment of In The Field, we’ve seen two more successive weekends with pumping hurricane swells, two more strong coastal storms that either brought torrential rains or strong westerly winds (or both) that browned up the seas for days.

And, as such, the fishing has continued to struggle. Surf fishing has been next to nonexistent save for back bay stuff. Fluke fishing has been okay on the days when the swells let up. The nearshore tuna fishing has been fairly good but the days when it’s accessible have been very limited.

False albacore have continued to be very skittish, making only brief appearances and rarely in the same place.

Over the weekend The Fisherman and New York State hosted the annual Montauk Surf Classic surfcasting tournament. The third weekend of September and not a single striped bass was weighed in. Despite some 200 anglers entered in the tournament, on Saturday morning just after sunrise there were only three or four fishermen actually throwing casts into the surf on Montauk’s north side and two on the south side. A sad state of affairs to say the least. The Hamptons Surf Club’s parallel contest saw only one fish weighed in, a 10-pounder caught from a bay shoreline.

In fact, the huge schools of small stripers that typically form the “blitzes” that are the marquee event of our surfcasting seasons seem to have vanished entirely. They had been roaming eastern Long Island Sound in August and seemed poised to swing into the fall in fine form. But after the first big swell to come thundering ashore, they went into hiding and have not revealed themselves again since. Where they have gone is anyone’s guess.

It’s still too early to assume the bass are passing us by offshore and that the fall run will be muted — and that seems unlikely to me. We won’t know until we get at least a week or two of settled seas. The hurricane parade has to end at some point — but the next week or so looks primed for more passing (hopefully passing, that is) tropical cyclones.

The fluke season will wrap up this week and it looks like Mother Nature might give us a tiny bit of a reprieve late in the week that could let things go out with a bang.

The tuna fishing has been pretty good when boats can get over the horizon. Saturday saw a great showing of small-ish yellowfins south of Shinnecock Inlet but few boats dared venture offshore on Sunday. Lots of local boats are running all the way up to the Rockaway Reef where an astounding stock of bluefin tuna has been on the feed just a few miles off the beaches for going on two months now.

Also this week, the fishing community is mourning the loss of Fred Golofaro, longtime editor of The Fisherman magazine. Fred was an obsessed fisherman and as dedicated to the spreading interest in, the understanding of and the protection of the sport as anyone has ever been. He was certainly one of if not the most influential characters in Long Island’s recreational fishing community and his influence will be sorely missed.

Rest in peace, Fred. See you up there.