Tumbleweed Tuesday
Labor Day Monday, as usual, ends with a traffic jam of sedans and high-end SUVs heading west. Montauk locals look forward to the day after Labor Day—historically known as Tumbleweed Tuesday. Some years, the community even celebrates by hiring a band to play on the green in the center of town.
This year, the fall run follows the calendar. Two days after Labor Day, false albacore intercept early waves of bay anchovies emptying from Gardiner’s Bay, just inside Montauk Point. Everything feels on schedule—a couple of weeks behind Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard.
Early albies are uncharacteristically aggressive and every bit as willing to take a full range of flies, epoxy jigs, even poppers. They raid shallow water as well, and a few fly-casting locals can be seen running along the beach in bare feet, hooking up as they go.
The “mosquito fleet”—a Montauk dragger captain’s description of the swarm of fly and light-tackle vessels chasing birds off Montauk Point each fall—will not be in full force for another three weeks. Until then, it’s long drifts, multiple hook-ups, and little worry that circling outboards will put feeding fish down.
However, with Tumbleweed Tuesday comes the other harsh reality of the season. My news feed from NOAA points out weather disturbances west of Cape Verde. Next are estimates of formations into something more tropical. Each developed system is followed with endless model runs, as ridges and troughs are expected to steer the strengthening systems west, and then north. I obsess about it a bit too much, but experiencing Sandy head-on scarred my memory.
Few tropical cyclones pose a significant threat here, but almost everything directed into the North Atlantic will have at least some impact. It might be a few days of a large swell, it could be a week of brutal Northeast winds, or it might be something more direct and significant.
I add a second set of lines to the cleats at the dock. I recheck the trailer, bearings, axles, and tires, just in case I need to pull the boat on short notice.
The Bowl
A boulder field left over from the last ice age forms a cove. A rising tide and a southeast swell dump white water and small bait into the bowl. My fishing buddy, Paul, has been doing a much better job of keeping it honest through mid-September. He tells me the bass are now coming in on the flood.
The only question is whether to wear waders or a wetsuit, and that depends on how aggressive we are to push out. The rest of the outfit was decided about 25 years ago: a ‘99 vintage Van Staal 200, a Lamiglas 9-foot light-action blank, 30-pound braid, and a few white bucktails between ¾ and 1½ ounces. Anything more in a surf bag is overkill, assuming I’m willing to carry it.
We pull into the lot to see a couple of familiar trucks, though we almost never see their owners. Today, they are either asleep—waiting for the night tide—or out on an ambitious walk across the coconut-sized boulders along the south side.
This will be easy fishing, with one exception: we must have good cleats for getting through the kelp-covered tidal pools and a proven way of securing them to our boots. I have a nice collection of odd Korkers I found in The Bowl—lefts and rights, in several sizes—proof that many surfcasters rush through the important lacing-up step.
We climb over the boulders and kelp, and by the time the white water is just over my knees, I see the first dorsal fin. I wave to Paul and point. He laughs. “I know, I know. It’s been like this the last few days. Just wait, it gets better!”
Most surfcasters tend to arrive and launch their first casts out as far as they can. However, in the bowl, it’s usually better to keep casts short lest you risk hanging up on a large rock on the outside. I make my first cast and fear I’ve made exactly that mistake, then I realize the resistance is a feisty schoolie.
I look left to see Frank already hooked up as well. Paul holds off on casting for the moment, happy to see this session going off as advertised.
The bass come and go in waves as the flooding tide brings ever larger walls of white water. My 3-millimeter wetsuit seems a bit much for an early fall afternoon. Each time I feel warm, I kneel down, hold my breath, and let a wave wash over my head. I stay under a little longer, and for a few seconds I forget that I am even fishing. It’s pure therapy … the rush of seawater and the bubbles.
By the time the tide tops out, we have retreated at least 100 feet. We finally use a lull in the action as an excuse to call it a day, but as I turn toward shore, I see another dorsal fin. There were fish feeding behind us the whole time.
The Cold Front
The dog days of summer, and all that humidity, are a distant memory. It’s 52 degrees as I stumble down the dock in the dark. September is coming to a close, and a T shirt isn’t going to cut it today. I struggle to find the arms of my heavy fleece top.
I climb aboard the Contender and reach into the console to flip on the battery, holding my breath, hoping the engine turns over. The Yamaha shudders and comes to life, the exhaust trailing off into the cool morning air.
“Damn, if only this wind would let up just a little, I could at least get around the point. I’ll worry about wind against tide for the ride home.”
That never works. Just try riding past screeching birds, with the sight of false albacore ripping across the surface—the best of it in the nastiest sections of the chop.
Putting 60 feet of fly line into the air with a 20-knot crosswind means hooking your captain, your friends, or the outboard—probably all the above. A risk worth taking.
The white water from the top of a wave gets blown at us, and plenty of it comes over the bow as we reposition for the next drift. Absolutely nothing left above deck will remain dry this morning.
It’s delightful chaos. Not a thought for anything else going on in my life—nothing matters now except holding on and getting off a good cast as soon as some heads or tails show.
The wind dies down and swings southwest by late afternoon. The albies are still eating but are much less aggressive now. My crew is fading too. We beat ourselves up, along with our gear, and snapped off a few good jigs and flies in the process.
What’s left are stories of fishing victories at sea, and albies crisscrossing in the face of the waves. I’m having a beer now at the marina restaurant. My lips burn with the taste of sea salt and sunblock. I can still feel the boat rocking.
Running The Sand
There are approximately 22 miles of fishable ocean beach from Montauk Point to the town line with Southampton, about 17 of which can be driven these days. The days of doing the whole thing in one go are far behind me. I’ve driven every foot of it over the last 30 years: three vehicles, two clutches, and two new transmissions. If I’ve gotten any wiser, I know that predetermined stops, and letting the binoculars do the work, is a much more practical way to cover larger distances of sand.
A fellow surfcaster once joked: “There are highway miles and city miles … and, well, then there are beach miles.”
It’s rare to run the sand in the fall without seeing something positive. It’s the second week of October, and today will be no different. Driving west, I immediately spy terns picking away at bay anchovies from a sand point on the eastern boundary of Hither Hills. Two sets of surfcasters are way ahead of me, driving toward the action. I’m quite content to nurse an oversized mug of coffee from the overlook lot.
A second, larger group of birds begins circling about a quarter mile out. Very promising, but not as helpful to a surfcaster. I text a friend, Montauk Captain Tim O’Rourke, just in case he is heading out by boat into a north wind that is blowing harder than forecasted.
The next stop is near the 4×4 access path on Napeague, a narrow sand isthmus connecting Amagansett with Montauk. A large concentration of birds and trucks are visible through my binoculars. A massive flock of birds are spread out over a very wide area, but are at least 4 to 5 casts out.
Another 2-mile run further west, to another 4×4 access point, confirms that the main activity is confined to the Napeague State Park section. Nothing more to see, so I commit and release 15 psi from the tires of my Jeep Wrangler.
I drive along the 4×4 path through dunes lined with pitch pines. I’ve run it hundreds of times, but it gets harder when I think back to what it once was. It takes only the slightest cue: the smell of honeysuckle, the sight of early winterberries, or the rays of sun breaking through the blue clouds over the dunes during a fall rain squall. I want to go back to a time and a place when a surfcaster’s world seemed perfect. I’m overcome with emotion. So many fall runs here, so many epic days chasing fish down the sand with so many good friends who have departed.
The urgency of intercepting fish suddenly becomes less important, so I take my time. The points, bars, and troughs of a sand beach come into focus. Even a wild and undeveloped beach like this one follows a process. The waves come over the bar and water channels parallel to the beach until it retreats through a cut. Striped bass come over the bar when there is enough water, and sometimes even when there is not. The contour of a wild sand beach changes week to week, but certain bars and cuts remain prominent year after year.
I stop to cast bucktails at each point and remember specific trips with special people. I slowly work my way east toward the main action.
A Late Push of Bass
The main body of fish from a couple weeks ago have moved on. A frost warning has been issued for agricultural interests on the East End as the month of October ends. It’s a morning for a knit cap and heavy fleece top. The wind swings wildly each day, from northeast to northwest, then southwest, then all the way around again. Every day, there’s a new small-craft advisory. I won’t bother taking the boat out in that chop unless there is a really good reason. Nothing seen or heard lately suggests it’s worth it.
It’s a “date trip,” which means bringing my wife in the Jeep. We pick up spiced coffee and donuts decorated with pumpkins from the bake shop, and drive around like a couple of yokels with rods on the front bumper. If we don’t find any fish, that’s perfectly fine—we’ll end with a late afternoon stop for local ale and steamers at the Chowder House.
After a quick loop around the Montauk Lighthouse lot, and then through the 4×4 access path to the north side, I’m reminded of why I should never make fishing predictions. I’m totally unprepared for this.
Fish are rolling in the wash, everywhere. Better yet, it’s late October and it’s been so slow that nobody is here. I try to behave like a normal person. I sip my coffee and hand my wife a donut. She knows me better.
“Are those fish right there? Yes? Oh my god, look at all of them! Aren’t you going to get out and catch some?”
If I needed permission to get out and fish, this was more than I could hope for.
I open the tailgate to grab my waders, only to realize that I left them hanging in the back of the house by the hose. Great, no Korkers either. Nothing, just my new leather flip-flops.
At least I have a plug bag, but I open it to see it’s still loaded for a recent night tide, basically needlefish and darters. There’s still a 2-ounce Ava-style jig on one of the rods. It will have to do.
I walk down to the waterline, trying to steer clear of the slime-covered rocks. I send off a cast, and within a few cranks, I’m into a bass. I pull the 9-pound schoolie over the kelp-covered rocks. So far so good, but now I have to release it. I kick off my flip-flops and throw them a few feet above the waterline. I roll up my pants and step over the rocks and kelp in my bare feet, but the next wave soaks me to my backside. The bass is successfully released, but now my arms are soaked up to my elbows.
The water is cold, but the fish continue to blitz. I make another cast with the Ava jig, and I immediately hook up, then again, and again. I must look like a spectacle out there, standing barefoot in a tidal pool in street clothes, getting drenched by a wave every so often. A couple of tourists visiting the lighthouse stop to take pictures of me fighting a fish.
An unknown number of hours later, my feet are numb from the cold water. The air temperature is dropping quickly as the late October sun sets. We will start losing light by 6 p.m.
The fish keep coming, but I’ve had enough. Somehow, I had at least enough sense to pack a towel and dry sweatshirt in the Jeep. I put the rod back in the holder and grab a camera to capture a few shots of some very lucky surfcasters who ignored the no-fish-here reports and drove to Montauk anyway.
We rush back home so I can get a hot shower. There is just enough time to go for those steamers after all.
Veteran’s Day
It’s now the 11th week of the fall run. I’ve used up almost all the hall passes and brownie points from my wife. There’s a certain crankiness in my demeanor that I blame on so many blown-out trips, being a day late and a dollar short on others, and a general lack of consistency in the local fall runs over the last couple of years.
This is a “What have I got to lose?” kind of trip. The boat is still in the water, there’s a light wind and, most importantly, I’ve got some gas in the tank, thanks to those previously canceled trips. It’s just me today.
I clear the inlet to immediately find flocks of birds working bait in multiple places. I’m the proverbial kid in a candy store, as one blitz looks better than the next. All of them feature bass and blues on the surface, even a few albies. I finally set my sights on a tremendous mess of birds and breaking fish just east of Washington Shoal, a rocky hump between inner and outer Shagwong reefs. It’s simply impossible to lower a jig or fly into the water and get it back without a fish. When I tire from the bass, I try my luck flipping epoxy jigs for albies. This is pointless because a large bluefish intercepts them every time.
After a siesta and as the tide turns, the blitzing continues, but now it’s even more intense and widespread. At times, I’m driving through good schools of breaking fish to get to even thicker schools of breaking fish. This is a definite no-no as far as fishing etiquette is concerned, but on a day like today, it doesn’t matter.
The light-tackle fleet consists of one or two diehards and me, depending on how and when you do the counting. Everybody else is either out of the water, fishing back west, or off to more exotic places.
I finally put the rod down and pop open a Diet Coke. I dig around the cockpit for that bag of stale pretzels I remember seeing 2 weeks ago. There is no reason to catch another fish, but it’s too early to head home.
I’m happy to just let the boat take me where the wind and tide pleases. The soda washes down the barely-edible pretzels as I watch the Garmin sonar screen lit up from all the fish below.
I wonder if the fall run is getting later now. I wonder where all the fish under the boat began their journey. Maine? Cape Cod? I wonder how many more fishable days on the water I will get before the dockmaster tells me that’s it, that I absolutely, positively, must pull the boat.
