A friend who fishes and surfs called this morning.

He posed that question to me, and the sheer dollar estimates we were talking about were shocking, though expected.

We haven't touched base in awhile. He lives in NJ and is a fighter for fishing access from way back, one of the original guys who threatened Deal, NJ officials with a lawsuit to gain access for the surfers there. Back in the 80's, I think. Surfrider eventually took over the cause and the lawsuit, but the way I understand it, he was one of the original guys, offering to pay money to a lawyer to get things started.

We were talking about access in LI, as although he surfs, he fishes every fishable day.

We started counting the places where you need night permits to fish (basically almost everywhere except some places in the Western S Shore/NY Bight and the Western Sound.) And even those areas have limited free access, mostly docks and piers in questionable spots..





He said:
"Rich, the guys in NJ don't know how easy they have it...if I wanted to fish every different village area in LI at night, can you imagine how much it would cost, just for one season?? "

We started rattling off the obvious places, Night permit for Gateway... (Breezy, Tilden, Floyd Bennet, etc), Night passes for Jones, FI, then the Hampton Beaches...and of course Montauk.... where you not only need a night access pass to park in the lot to fish, but also a 4wd pass if you want to drive on the beaches as well....

I'm not giving away the answers here, because there are a lot more "villages" on the North Shore that come into the equation. For example, if you want to fish the Brookhaven area, if you're not a resident you need a night fishing permit just to get out there and walk out on the sand with the intention of fishing.... I think that permit is $150 (not sure of the exact fee) for folks who don't live in Brookhaven proper, and there are similar fees all up and down the North Shore....