May 5, 2010

I’m back, alive & kicking, although kicking a little easier than in the past. I had a triple
bypass and a pacemaker installed over the winter and am still recupearting a bit. My wife
and I just got back from Guatemala and she was telling everybody down there that with
my new battery, I’m going to be like that bunny on TV pounding on the drum. We’ll see.

The winter kind of sucked as usual, unless you are one of those guys who doesn’t mind
freezing your ass off while catching codfish. In that case you were in your glory. The
fishing was awsome from January through March. By April 1 it was all over at least as far
as the people were concerned. The fishing was still OK, and there are still codfish out
there. Twenty years ago all the charterboats aimed to be in the water to get codfishing by
April 1. Now it seems like that’s the end of it instead. Going into the winter I was
wondering about the wisdom of the up-island head boats migrating out here. I didn’t think
that there would be enough people to make it worthwhile. It just goes to show you how
much I know. They did great. I guess they brought their own clients out with them. It
might even make up for the lack of fares during their normal season. The charterboats
that stayed in didn’t do as well as the headboats.

Fluke season opens on the 15th, but they are out there now and biting. It’s not great, but
it’s a start and will probably be in peak form for the opening. I wasn’t here, but I
understand that the LAZYBONES was railed on Saturday, even thougn he hasn’t got a
set-aside permit like most of the other head boats, the ones that didn’t sail.

Striped bass season is open now, but the fish don’t know it yet. One charterboat spent all
day Saturday without a bite.

The fluke season this year won’t have that crazy mid term shutdown like last year, thank
you. Seabass will open on May 22nd and run until September 12. The feds extended the
180 day seabass shutdown until that date, which I don’t understand. Hopefully they won’t
pull that crap again, but I’m suspicious. The regs for the other species are pretty much the
same as last year.

We lost Carl Darenberg Sr of the Montauk Marine Basin and Eddie Miller from Westlake
over the winter. They both had been in failing health for a while.