THE RECENT torrential downpours ended a month of terrific weather and even better fishing, with the past few days seeing more activity offshore for both sharks and tuna.
The story of the weekend involved Ken and Audrey Timper, from Amity Harbor, L.I., who set out shark fishing Saturday morning some 40 miles south of Montauk Point aboard their boat Magic Moment.
The question here is, who did the catching? They hooked up at 8 a.m. on a rather light 30 reel with 50-pound test line. For the next nine hours the couple, along with their friend Jeff, got towed around the Atlantic by what turned out to be a 518-pound thresher shark that they finally gaffed and tied up alongside their boat.
Unlike a mako, whose power is in its solid, muscular body and whose ability to leap out of the water will wear out an angler, the thresher has a long powerful tail that will keep it from being brought to the surface by even the most professional of anglers. You have to hand it to the Timpers, who stayed with the fish for what must have been a grueling nine hours.
The Montauk Boatman’s and Captain’s Association shark tournament took place over at the Star Island Marina. The largest shark was a 315 blue taken on the Fish On. A 286-pound mako caught on the Fisherman II took second, while a 281-pound thresher taken by Capt. Joe McBride of the charter boat My Mate took the third spot. Fishing out of Shinnecock Inlet, Chris Maverick landed a 350-pound thresher on Phil Abromowitz’s boat, Strike Three.
The waters south of Shinnecock and Montauk have been very fertile for sharks the past two weeks and it’s hoped that the tuna fishing will break open soon.
The HA buoy and the Glory Hole had some mako activity over the weekend. Richie Rosenkranz, who runs the Woodcleft Fishing Station in Freeport, said that a 237 mako was taken at the HA, while a boat called the No Bananas took a 217-pounder at the Hole.
There are small yellowfins at the west wall of Hudson Canyon and small bluefins being caught at both the Bacardi Wreck and Texas Tower. The offshore trollers are hooking up with tuna in the 50-pound class.
We got a report that boats out of Brielle, N.J., caught a couple of big fish at Hudson Canyon. The Reel Seat came in with a 263-pound bigeye tuna, while Joe Natoli released a 500-pound-plus blue marlin.
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New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection announced that the winner of the state’s first Young Artist Trout Stamp Contest is a Passaic County student who penciled a colorful representation of a trout leaping out of the water to catch a fly.
Ognjen Topic, 18, of Pompton Plains, will see his artwork published on more than 70,000 official New Jersey trout stamps for the 2005 freshwater-fishing season. Chosen from more than 300 entries, Topic’s drawing features a breaching trout framed by a swirling sky in shades of blue and green and a rocky riverbed.