Went out fishing for striped bass this week, with a friend who has a house (and a boat) out in Mastic Beach, which is a bit west (and a bit less fancy than) of Westhampton.
At first, during the early afternoon, he wanted to play around (i.e. fish) on the jetties which line the Moriches Inlet...
Moriches Inlet
Now, I enjoy fishing; it's relaxing, it's fun, it allows me to commune with nature, etc. etc. You see people enjoying it, sitting on a dock or on a boat, perhaps smoking a corncob pipe or chewing on a blade of grass. Like this:
This was nothing like that.
My first task was putting on waders. I've never put on waders; had it not been for the fishing part, this was one of the hardest things I've ever done.
These keep you dry, even while standing on the shoreline and casting into the surf, praying that you're not gonna get pulled out by the undertow, which is, let's just say, stronger than you think. (Being told to stand on one leg when you think the undertow is going to pull you down was not necessarily a comfort.) While surf casting on the beach is fun (and driving on the beach is even more fun, though sometimes it feels like driving might be like on the surface of the moon), getting onto the jetties in order to cast into the inlet, is a whole different story. For that, you have to put on boots with spikes on the bottom. Like these:
Because the jetty is rocks, which are wet, uneven, slippery and dangerous. Let's also just say I didn't last too long on the jetty; my first cast get caught on the rocks, I lost the lure, and that was that.
Here's a Google maps screenshot of the beach we drove along, from Smith Point to the Moriches Inlet on the right-hand side. When the beach is impassable (high tide, dunes, whatever), there's a "road" just behind the beach which gets used; it makes 2nd Avenue look like the smoothest road you've ever been on.
Okay, so that was fun, and after an hour or two we drove back to the house to relax a bit, and then went over to the boat to fish again, an hour or two before sunset. First, I had to put back on the damn waders, and we had to gas up the boat on the way out...
Gassing up in one of the marinas near the inlet, look how beautiful it is! Also, this is one of the few pictures I could take, as it was one of the few times I wasn't holding on for dear life. Actually...I kid...a little - it was mostly pretty smooth. Getting in and out of the inlet to the ocean, not quite as smooth. One of the little pieces of advice given to me by the captain: always have one hand for the boat; meaning, if we hit a wake or a wave and start bouncing around a bit (trust me, you bounce), you want to be able to grab a rail and hold on.
Out of the marina, out of the inlet, and into the ocean we went. My friend is a fisherman; i.e. he knows how to find fish. Every minute or two he would say: "Did you see that?!" My answer: "What?" You're basically looking for birds diving for bait fish, and you're looking for the ocean to boil - or what's called a blitz. While we never hit a true blitz, there were birds, there was bait, and we ended up with these beauties, caught in full view of the multi-million dollar houses on Westhampton Beach.
Recreational striped bass fishing is highly regulated. One fish per day per person may be kept - we each caught one. And the size must be between 28" and 31" (used to be 35"), which these are. Successfully we fished the sun going down; coming back in the dark is interesting as well, but my buddy, in addition to being an experienced fisherman, is also an experienced boater. Radar helps!
We went out again the next morning (or, as they like to say, at first light (I learned so much on this short trip)), but no fish were around. All was not lost however, as there were plenty of dolphins all around, either playing or chasing food. After a leisurely breakfast, I drove back into the city (as any experienced cab driver might do) with my gorgeous striped bass fillets. He went out again that afternoon, and caught and released a bunch of fish caught surfcasting. I'd do it again in a NY minute!
Oh - here's what a real blitz, off Montauk, looks like:
