captmike28
Well-Known Angler
Took advantage of yesterday’s brief weather window to try one last shot at Montauk Fluke for this season with a 3-man crew of Chef Nader, Neil, and Tom. Conditions on the ride out were flat and thankfully most of the day was quite fishable with the threat of small craft warnings hovering on all the forecasts.
Started on my favorite south side drop and found a bunch of small Sea Bass with just a single keeper among the group. We did manage 2 keeper Fluke at 19.5 and 20” before the dogfish moved in and ended our efforts there.
Slid further south to another reliable drop and at least we escaped the really annoying sharks and started to pull some Fluke. A lot of shorts to start but every once in a while, a nice keeper found the box. First Neil puts a 21” fish in the box. Then Tom comes up with a double header of keeper Sea Bass. As the wind started to build the bite remained steady with only a single dogfish annoying us and many more short Sea Bass and Fluke. Finally, the Chef recovers from a long drought and quickly puts his 3 fish limit in the box with Fluke of 5.2, 4.5, and 3# respectively. We did manage to cull a few more Sea Bass for the box but that was it as the majority of the late bite was mainly short biscuits and a few more short Fluke to end the day. So final tally wound up being 6 keeper Fluke, 5 keeper Sea Bass, and a handful of nice sized Scup to cap off what has been an extremely challenging Fluke season for almost everyone.
Ride home was a bit sporty in the 25kt SW breeze but the Albin handled it in style as she always does. Many thanks to a solid crew who hung in there on a pretty slow fishing day for the east end.
