Well, Sunday, May 18th, 2008, Cody, my wife Nancy and I took a spin out to the south side of Montauk off the Radar Tower in 65' to 70' of water for some fluke fishing. We had a near full moon and high winds that built all day. In the morningthe wind out of the west was around 10-15 knots, and built to near 20+ knots by noon. We had two hours of the end of incoming left for the morning so we drifted from West to East at around 1.5 to 2.0 knots. We iused squid strips on tandem hook fluke rigs with flor. green 4" squid skirts and tipped with large sand eels. Nancy had the 1st throwback at around 19" , then I got a 20.7" keeper and four more shorts in the 18-20" range. Cody finally got going and had four fish all shorts in the same range.

The tide went slack around 10-10:30AM then finally started moving around 11AM changed. Donald Wu fishing abord the "Nice Day Too" a 55' aluminum catamaran party boat run by Tommy . Donald called me and said they had nothing but dogfish and a few keeper Black Sea Bass on a 60' hump of rough bottom just a mile south west of where we were fishing. By the end of the day, they never got a fluke and only managed another couple of keeper bass.

The Lighthouse rips held small keeper size Stripers for those who could take the torture of jigging wire line and bucktails. That's not for me! I'll wait till the night time ell bite is on. In the mean time, we will go North to the Race, Sluiceway and Gut for bass at night on bucktails and three way rigs.

I can't wait till the next Warm Core Eddy comes roaring into the Northeast Canyons so I can go get some fresh tuna for the pallet. Tightlines, Till the next Tide!

By the way, we will be taking our 1st military guess from our participation of "TAKE A VET FISHING" program I joined last year. It should be a good time for all.

July 2008 Monster Montauk Stripers
Drift after drift we keep getting fish or shots. I realize that we are blowing somany shots because the fish are not instantly inhailing the eels, but playing with them. We discuss the method and start to let the fish eat the eels longer before setting the hook. THis is unusal for Montauk, here we usually just instantly set the hook.

I get a mid 30s on the next drift. THe action slows a little and I decied to keep another couple of spots honest. So we run south and make twenty drifts between three spots with only one hit.

Now honestly, we like incoming much better and outgoing for big fish...that is... except on this little piece we were first working. Now its 1AM and we decied to go back and work the end of the tide on our honey hole then snooze for an hour as the tide changes then finish up the incoming up by the lighthouse.

Alfred says "You know there could be a 50-60 or even 70 pounder sitting on this piece just waiting to eat our eels" I know Al, this place is always great the latter in the tide it gets. We start the drift and I get a big fihs on, I an feel its big with sholders but never got a solid hook in him. We go back up on the drift and this time on the same drift line on Northstar 951, Al says " I am getting a hit, I am letting him eat it" "IAM IN!!!!!" Wow its a big fish!!!

I place my rod in the holder leaving it our for a second cow and get the big net to assist and net Al's nice fish. Even though were in shallow water 24-27' the fish take some monster runs hard against his tight drag. Back and forth, give and take this is a real cow. I finally get to see the silver silloute of the COW and I get totally STOKED! ITS BIG, REAL BIG!
I finally get to scoop it up and I can't just lift the net and fish into the boat...its BIG!! I use two hands and over the rail she comes.


WOW, wat a cow, the head and gut on this fish made me easily think it was mid to high fifties...its big and both Al who has a 60.25# and 50.5# striper with multiple high 40-49 pounders under his belt as well as my 55 and 51.5 and four 49-49.5# stripers under mine....its just plain BIG!

We did some video on my camera (but no IR illuminator) since the only thing missing, was my son, Cody, who immediately got a telephone call as well as my wife at 1:30AM to tell of ongoing success and the big fish on the deck. I took some pictures and video and back we went to work, four more fish into 35# hit the deck. THen we went to the light house at 2AM and started fishing three incoming spots, two to three drifts per spot with not hits, runs, or errors and at 2:30AM we called it a night.

With Fifteen big cows under our belt, it was a great night of typical Montauk striper fishing!

Back at the dock we immediately weighted the big female...the dock scale says it 50 on the button, I can't beleive that its at least 53-55lbs, It just seems very big, but the scale doesnt lie, OK off to bed, at 5:30 AM the dock opens, we get up put her on the digital scale and she tops at 49.60, SHit! so close yet so far, We are real guys who don't fool ourselves and a 50 is a 50 and a 49 is just a forty! Got to be true with yourself first! Well Al's birthday is tomorrow so here was his 51 year birhday bass! Good going Al! and it is the way its been for 31 years we have fished to gether, whenever we get into big fish, he is always rigt next to me. Sorry Cody missed this night, it was a great one for the memory books!