Montauk

With the sun shining, a light, cool breeze, and nearly unlimited visibility, it was a perfect summer’s day for a whale watch. Under ideal sea and atmospheric conditions, we had our first signs of cetacean life, the tell-tale signs of a distant blow, approximately an hour after passing the lighthouse. We expertly followed the spout and waited for the whale, a mature finback, to surface. Typically, with fin whales, their speed, and long breath-holding times keep us a good distance away, but yesterday’s trip was an exception. This whale would surface, at first about 100-150 yards from our vessel, increasingly getting closer as we waited safely out of gear. Close approaches by fin whales are rare, but passengers got exceptional views as this whale, likely feeding on the dense patches of bait near the surface, appeared repeatedly around the vessel….

Sun Aug 3 – 1/2 Day Fishing AM Captain Mike Ricker reports a great afternoon on the Viking Star. We were able to get many knot-heads Porgy in the buckets. Kids were asking if we had bigger buckets! We had a beautiful and fun afternoon on the water. Congratulations to our pool winner, Adam Kolesar,…

Capt Dave reports a little slower of a morning today. We looked around for a bit and found where the Porgies were. We got a good amount of Porgies with some Seabass mixed in, but only a couple keepers. At the end of the day everyone got a good catch to take home. The pool…

Captain Mike Ricker reports a morning full of rod-bending action! We caught plenty of nice-sized knothead Sea Bass and jumbo Fluke. It was such a nice morning on the water and all of the kiddos had a blast. Congratulations to our first place pool winner, Casey Steinhert, from Dix Hills, NY, who caught a 7.8…

Captain Mike Ricker reports a great afternoon of fishing. After a few drifts, we had plenty of rods bending, which stayed steady for the rest of the trip.  We had some nice knot-head Sea Bass and Porgies. We also had several keeper Flukes in the buckets. It was a nice afternoon on the water! Congrats…

Captain JR reports a gorgeous day of catching on the Viking Starlite. We had great sea bass action everywhere we went today. Lots of big Block Island knot heads bending rods. Also, some gorgeous fluke added a very nice touch to the great catch. A wonderful day to be out!The pool winner is Biker Mike…

Capt Dave reports a great day on the Viking Starship. It was excellent Porgy fishing early with a steady pick of mixed size Porgies and some Sea Bass, Fluke and Bluefish in the catch. We stayed at the lighthouse and picked away at them with the big crowd we had today. The first place pool…

Capt Mike reports a beautiful morning on the water. We started off bending rods on the first drop and it stayed that way to the end. It was steady non stop action with nice keeper Fluke, Knothead Sea Bass and Porgies in the buckets! The first place pool winner was Thomas Dowd from Port Jefferson…

Capt JR reports an EXCELLENT start to today’s full day Block Island trip!! Lots of big knot head Sea Bass and some BEAUTY Fluke before 8 AM! Plenty of room on tomorrow’s trip! Come on down!!

Another challenging yet successful trip with whales and dolphins. We headed out again to ostensibly cool off while looking for marine mammals. The relatively cooler water helped to curtain some of the brutal conditions and made things more comfortable than on land.  We had multiple reports of whales to the south and decided to head that way. As we traveled, we found a few pelagic birds and the numbers increased moderately, Cory’s shearwaters, then great shearwaters, and Wilson’s storm petrels. Eventually, we saw a humpback whale dive tdovetabout 350 yards ahead of us. This was a large individual, but the prey was in the upper 1/3 of the water column so the whale undertook a shallow, non-fiuking dive. We waited for the whale to resurface, but in the haze we must have missed it and after 15 minutes headed on….