catch dolphin on a regular basis. Most work lines of lobster pot buoys, casting baits to each one until they manage to find fish, or drift baits beneath the big “NA” and “HA” buoys that mark ship- ping lanes into the Port of New York. NOAA weather buoys might also look tempting, but the agency has instructed vessels to stay at least 20 yards away, and will take enforcement action against anyone touching or tying up to one of them. Weekdays can offer pro- ductive fishing, but pickings quickly get
All of those places produce best later in the season, after warm, clean water has had a chance to move inshore.
up with some mahi, many long-range boats will make a quick stop at the pots before they head home, particularly when the tuna bite goes dead.
IF IT FLOATS, FISH IT
Fishing the pots, wherever you find them, isn’t difficult. Just approach the buoy from uptide, drop the boat’s engines into neutral and cast your bait into the buoy’s shadow. Passing down- tide of a buoy risks fouling the boat’s
slim on busy weekends, when the same pots and navigation aids are targeted repeatedly over the course of a day. Since most of the bottom off Long Island is little more than a sand and silt plain, with scant structure to concen- trate and hold lobster, finding pots to fish can be a challenge. There are gen- erally buoys along the edges of the “Mud Hole,” which snakes down from the New York Bight to parallel the Jersey Shore. The hard bottom around “17 Fathoms” is crowded with pots, and a few more can usually be found a
20
little farther south. There is another concentration roughly eight miles off Jones Inlet, on the Cholera Bank. All of
those places produce best later in the season, after warm, clean water has had a chance to move inshore. Buoys set in deeper water between Montauk Point and Moriches Inlet see fishing begin much earlier, while the longest season and most con- sistent fishing of all is provided by pots located right on the canyons’ slopes. Although few anglers are willing to make a 75-mile canyon run just to hook
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running gear in an unseen rope trailing off the buoy’s line; it happens often enough, particularly in the canyons, to justify caution.
While many baits — including
chunks of butterfish, mackerel, bally- hoo or squid — can be effective, a small piece of freshly-caught skipjack or false albacore may be the best of all. Dolphin will sometimes take a big bait fished on a large hook — last year, I had a 12- pounder wolf down a whole mackerel impaled on a #10/0—but the typical buoy-dwellers are “chicken dolphin”
TIDE
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