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Setpember 29, 2005 - Net gains: the joy of seiningThe Suffolk Times • September 29, 2005 Net gains: the joy of seining THE FEEL OF FALL is in the air, which I means snappers are running. By now they have gotten to be a nice size. As most people know, snappers are young bluefish. That's why they are such fun to catch, particularly on a light spin- ning rig. When our kids were young, snap- pers introduced them into the world of fishing. But before they coulc Focus go fishing, they had to learn how ON to get the bait. NATURE So out of the garage came the by Paul old seine net. It Stoutenburgh was one of those things that was Years ago, blowfish were common throughout our bays. When they first came on the scene they were a pest, as they were experts in robbing your bait. Then people started to eat them. They were the perfect fish — no bones, only a sort of car- tilage backbone. You ate them something like corn on the cob. Today it's a rarity to catch one in our bays. Suffolk Times photo by Paul Stoutenburgh bit on the frayed side — and then there was that big hole that you were going to fix one day but somehow the net always got put away with little thought of repair. Fresh bait always worked best, so the actual seining was done right on the spot where we fished, and that was down at the Point at Fleets Neck. Somehow the older and taller son al- ways got the end of the 10 -foot seine net that went out from shore into the deep water. One of the other, younger kids took the other end, where they didn't have to go but up to their knees. I can still see my son walking on tip- toes out in the deep water trying to keep the coolness from creeping up his It was well worth it, for as he made the big swing to shore, we could see all sorts of activity going on in the net. Once the net was on shore, everyone would gather round to look at the mass of silvery baitfish squirming below. Handfuls of wiggling, silvery fish were gathered and put into a bucket. There were lots of other goodies mixed in; golf ball-size baby blowfish were al- ways picked up first. They'd blow u into little white balls with prickles about them. These prickles would be quite un- comfortable for whatever tried to swallow them. You can imagine the surprise when their mouth felt the prickly barbs. This was the blowfish's protection against pre a ors. Naturally, when they are in the water, they fill their white bellies with water, making them a real mouthful for any- thing that would try to eat them. Then there were the pipefish, close relatives of the seahorse. These were about four to six inches long with a 1/8- inch- square body and what looked like a seahorse head. When in the water, they would stand upright, swaying in the current and looking all the more like grass. There would always be three or four of those squirming in amongst the others in the net. There were the globs of jelly -like masses an inch to two inches long that became phosphorescent when Pouched or disturbed at night. They are won- derful things to see up close, particu- larly when you are swimming at night. You'd bump into these comb jellies and they'd light up with their filament of greenish light. Sometimes there would be tiny phosphorescence in the as you stood up, all these tiny bits of greenish light ran down your body like little glowworms. Those were wonder- ful days; as the song goes, "Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end... " Then ther would always be five or six baby flounders that were so well camouflaged it was hard to find them, as their color blended in so well with the creek bottom. Yet if you turned them over on their backs they would show the white of their undersides: no need for camouflage there. There was always a smattering of grass shrimp, those transparent, one - inch -long shrimp that we see along the bottom and banks of our creeks. These were the shrimp that were gathered and sold for chum in the heyday of the great weakfish runs that, once drew fishermen by the thousands and party boats by the hundreds to fish the Pe- We've talked about this before ... the lady in New Suffolk who made a living out of catching grass shrimp. She had a short net that she held in her two hands and with this she probed along the edges of the bog of the creek. When her net filled she'd dump it into a killie cart that she towed behind her. She sold the shrimp by the quart to the party boat captains, who would use it for chum. That's how they fished for weakfish in those days — chumming off the back of the boat and using worms on a hook, they caught weakfish by the hundreds. In the net we also had killies. These are the little brownish - green, two - inches- and - longer killies that you see close to shore cleaning the bottom of detritus. They are part of the web of our creek life. When winter comes they hibernate in the mud. Some find that they can stay active and move about if they find a spot where the warm groundwater (50 degrees) moves out into the saltwater. This is usually at the headwaters of our creeks. It's a place where you'll find the kingfisher or the great blue heron eking out a living in the winter. It's where active killies can be found. We've tried using killies for bait, but for some reason the snappers don't eo for them. Killies can live in saltwater, freshwater or brackish water. Mlies are a hardy little fish and can live in saltwater, freshwater or brackish water. I had proof of this when I took three or four of them last year and put them in my small plastic fishpond by the house. Believe it or not, in the springtime, after the winter ice and everything had warmed up, I cleaned out the pond of all the dead leaves and other trash that had fallen in during the winter — and guess what wiggled out of the black muck and leaves but my three killies that had wintered over in the fresh water of the pond. As I say, they are a tough little fish. They are the ones that will still be alive in the bait bucket when all the others have died. In those early days it never occurred to us to think about eating those sleek - looking silversides we were using for bait. Today we've seen the light. Now whenever we go seining for snapper bait we take a special bucket and put the best -size silversides in it to take home to feast on. The way I cook them is to put half a cup of flour in a paper bag, drop in a handful of silversides or spearing, shake the bag vigorously and then deep -fry them until they look like french fries. No, you don't cu the head off or gut them or anything; you eat "the whole thing." At least I do. My wife likes them but she wants them cleaned so we always oblige her. It's quite easy to do since there is no scaling or anything like that. Try them 7othershave elieve the Italians and nown how to eat them k. Just never occurred to y em. Sometimes we'd catch a crab or two when seining. It would walk around, claws held high, ready for a fight. Usu- ally we'd just toss them back in be- cause with only one there's not enough for a meal. And so when the kids went snapper fishing they learned a little bit more about the world around them. They also learned how to pick up a crab without Qettine bitten.