Montauk

Capt Dave G reports a good day of fishing aboard the Viking Starlite 3/4 Day Bottom Fishing Special. We started the trip drifting for fluke which was not very productive. We caught a couple short fluke but no keepers. Then we moved on to the Sea Bass, and the fish were biting. We had to fight our way through the shorts, but ended up with a nice catch of quality jumbo sea bass. All in all it was a nice day on the water. The pool winners were Cynthia Castillo of Bayshore NY who took first place with a 3.6lb Sea Bass.  Second place was also won with a Seabass eaught by Regina Nasel of Long Is. City who caught a 3.3 pounder.

Capt Carl reports a good day on the Viking Starship. We started out at the lighthouse, it was better than yesterday, but not great. So we went offshore and had the rods bending the whole trip, but mostly medium to large size Porgies and mixed size SeaBass as well. Plenty of fish to be had! The pool winner was Gim Yee from Queens, NY with a 2.5 lb Porgy.

Full Report to follow. Pool winner – Marianne Kenary from Oyster Bay, Long Island with a 4.5 lb Fluke.

Another multi-species day! As we left the dock, a young gray seal (Halichoerus grypus)that we’d seen before was swimming around searching for food. Our trip on the oceans started out with a minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) that just a few of us saw (we call that a “stinky minke”).  We then found a small group (10) of inshore bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and later encountered one large group (50) and another small group (10), about 70 in all.  In the interim we spent time up close with a truly “stinky” humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae).  “Stinky” due to the mildly fetid, funky smell of its blow (perhaps due to a lung infection). Stinky humpback blows are and not that common but truly memorable.  The “bait” was abundant often near the sea floor (about 90 feet depth), we saw others blows in…

Capt JR reports improved action this afternoon on the Viking Star. We had SeaBass, Porgies, and Fluke on every drift. Tomorrow should be an even better improvement. The Pool winner was Zachary Maligres from Riverhead, NY with a 3 lb SeaBass.

The pool winners were Tom Byrnes from Port Washington, NY with a 4.5 lb Seabass. The second pool winner was Lind Ploce from Shir Michaels, NY,NY with a 3 lb Seabass. Full report to follow.

Capt Dave reports a slow start to the trip over by the Lighthouse this morning. Over by the Lighthouse we caught some small to medium size Seabass but because of the storm our fishing grounds were all messed up so we wanted to try something a little different and went off to the East. Over in the deeper water we caught tons of Seabass and some nice size Porgies. Overall we had a pretty decent pick today with lots of medium to large Seabass and some medium to Jumbo Porgies. There was a tie for the pool today; Samuel Gomez from Islip, NY and K.T. Morris from Westchester, NY with a 2.3 lb Seabass.

Minke whale and ~100-120 short-beaked common dolphins! So, what do you do on  the day before a hurricane is supposed to hit? Go looking for whales and dolphins, of course! The visibility was good, albeit the clouds and sky were gray, while the long, rolling 5’ ground swell was very comfortable.  Once again we found…

Capt. Dave reports an okay morning, the bite was off because of the full moon tide. We started out in the Seabass grounds and we caught a good amount of nice size Porgies. Everyone got the limit and the fish weighed up to 4 lbs. We went over to the Lighthouse where we had to…

Our best trip of the year!! Once again we had perfect conditions and lots of whales reported to us. 15 minutes after passing Montauk Lighthouse, we saw our first of about 12 minke whales. We encountered our the 1st of 11 humpback whales 30 minutes later! We were able to get close to photograph and identify 6 humpbacks, while the other 5 were seen within a 800 yard radius around us as we left out last whale – we’d run out of time. What made this trip extra special was that the last whale we were close to (the 2016 calf of Nile) was a true survivor. This young male had been severely entangled in 2900 lbs. of fishing gear and was disentangled via a herculean 4 day effort (https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/humpback-whale-disentangled-new-york-all-thanks-team-effort). We were the first vessel to encounter this whale last…