I fished an inlet E of jbay last night. last hour of incoming. 1 rat on bucktail and pork. This is Capt Gene's report from Montauk sportfishing-



It’s getting closer to the start of the fishing season. I always consider the start as when the LAZYBONES starts sailing and that will be on May 9, with diamond jigging for stripers and bluefish. They will stick with that until the official start of the fluke season which is going to be May 17 with a five fish limit at 18”.



One of the local pinhookers was out earlier in the week fishing commercially for fluke and brought back around a hundred pounds. A couple of days later he tried it again and only caught one fish, but there was still a bit of a heave on and fluke don’t like that.



There have been reports of some small stripers being caught in the surf, so they are more or less on schedule. Their season is already opened and the boats should be able to start catching them by the middle of the month or so.



There also have been some vague rumors about the squid showing up at Rough Riders, but that has to be kept a little quiet because when it gets too busy there the dock will be closed.



Capt Joe McBride of the MY MATE finished last season on the disabled list when he got a hip replaced. Hips and knees are to fishermen as elbows and shoulders are to baseball players. Now he’s starting out on the DL once again to get the other one done. Capt Pete Casale will be running the boat in the meantime, and it kind of looks like he will end up buying the boat from Joe at some point.



Capt Michael Potts of the BLUEFIN IV had his engine blow up over the winter and is fighting with the insurance company over coverage. In the meantime there is no engine in the boat, so his season is kind of up in the air as well.



And last but not least, over the winter, Capt Bart Ritchie of the MISTRESS TOO took a job running a boat cleaning up the south shore bays from Sandy and might wind up sticking with that rather than running charters here in Montauk



The annual Surfmasters tournament starts May 9 and will run until the end of June. If you are good enough and want to enter it, check in at Paulies Tackle Shop in town.