DESPITE the great spring weather, water temperatures are still colder than normal and saltwater fishing has been slow to get on track. With the trout season opener just a days away, don’t expect much in that department either.
For winter flounder anglers, fishing has been improving at a snail’s pace, with Jamaica Bay producing some halfway decent numbers. We heard of anglers taking 3-4 fish near the Marine Parkway Bridge and the Train Trestle Bridge. There were also a few fish taken by Staten Island in the Keyport area. Also got word of a few handfuls of flatties taken in Baldwin Bay.
The trout season, which opens Tuesday throughout much of New York State and which will be covered extensively in Sunday’s column, will no doubt see rivers and streams swollen with snow pack melt-off, leaving only a cast or two for the Rite of Spring.
In my travels, I’ve heard concerns on the clam die off that has littered the beaches from Breezy Point to Fort Tilden. Millions of dead clams washed up on these beaches and the stench they caused could be detected miles inland.
Many Breezy residents were concerned that the Sayreville, N.J., sewer line break over six weeks ago, which dumped close to 600 million gallons of raw sewage into Raritan Bay and New York Harbor, was the cause of the die off.
A N.Y. Dept. of Environmental Conservation spokesman, Matt Burns, said that the die off actually occurred during the middle of February, before the sewage line break, and said that DEC experts attributed it to a combination of the big Nor’easter that dumped two feet of snow on the area and frigid winter temperatures. Area residents were unaware of all the clams until the arrival of warm weather in mid-March and a thaw of the frozen clams.
Dan Lewis, from the Bureau of Marine Resources on Long Island said that the sewage spill should not harm local waters because “cold weather is not conducive to bacteria survival.” Ed Levine, Scientific Support Coordinator for NOAA in NYC added that Mother Nature would help out. “The solution to pollution is dilution,” said Levine, referring to tidal surges and all the freshwater coming down the Hudson from snow melt and spring rains.
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The 2nd Annual Long Island Sportsmen Show will run today through Sunday at the Suffolk Community College Sports and Exhibition Hall in Brentwood off Wicks Road.
The show will feature some of the Island’s top anglers, including Rich Tenreiro, Nick Karas, Fred Golofaro, John Paduno and Capt. John Raguso, who will be sharing their knowledge through a series of seminars. There will also be educational exhibits from New York’s DEC, N.Y. Sportsfishing Federation, N.Y. Fishing Tackle Trade Assn., Montauk Surfcasters and North Fork Captains Assn. to name just a few. Show hours will be 4-10 p.m. today, 10 a.m.-10 p.m. tomorrow and 10 a.m.-6 p.m. on Sunday. For more info, call (516) 598-7399.
