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March 22, 2007 - Gone Fishin' with Pup-pupSuffolk Times • March 22, 2007 Wlt one fishlin' up -pup Suffolk Times photo by Judy Plant On our last fishing trip just before we headed home our neighbor Tom won first prize for the biggest and most fish caught. He's holding a sheepshead, a fish comparable to our porgy. Read the story to find out why the little dog Is so haonv to see a fish come aboard. Tomorrow we fly home after two months away from some of the mean- est cold and snowy weather on record. From the reports I got, it sounded like 'I p„ the winters when was a kid growing up in Cutchogue. Maybe I'm wrong, bu I can remember the winter came with frozen ground in the beginning and it stayed frozen until March. It was a time the bays froze when the creeks and, yes, over, and snow was just part of the or- deal. , S t A '� I can remem- Focus ber when we got our first oil O N burner installed NATURE m the house, for it meant not by Pain only steady heat throughout the Stoutenburgh house, but it also eliminated the never- ending wood cutting that was always there to do. The only relief from erw,a supplying wood for that monster wood stove that sat in the living room was III after the 1938 hurricane. There were so - 00 ;, many trees down everywhere that my dad hired a man with a buzz saw that ran off a farm tractor. It cut up enough wood for two winters. I can still hear that huge, three -foot screaming saw as as cut through tree after tree. In those da3 there were no chain saws, which today w ! do the yob so quickly and efficiently. I V Z11 In the '30s and '40s, winter was ex- ,m yll %�I petted to be just that: cold and windy, k with ice and snow. With the exception of this year, most of our recent winters have been rather mild. _ Suffolk Times photo by Judy Plant On our last fishing trip just before we headed home our neighbor Tom won first prize for the biggest and most fish caught. He's holding a sheepshead, a fish comparable to our porgy. Read the story to find out why the little dog Is so haonv to see a fish come aboard. ar ara and I can appreciate the difficulties some experienced with re- cord- breaking snowfalls this year, for it brought back memories of when I was in college up in Oswego, N.Y. We saw those four - and five -foot snowfalls. You have to see it to believe it. To say farewell to Florida, we decided to take an afternoon off and go fishing with Judy and Tom. We hired the same Captain Kathe and her pontoon boat that took us to the bird island last week. With our coolers full and a batch of cookies Barbara made, we headed out. Kathe, the skipper, brought along her aughter Katie and their spaniel Pup - pup. I mention the dog because it added many a laugh to our day. The first laugh was when, only 10 or 20 minutes away from the dock, Pup -pup started barking and running around. He had spotted a small pod of porpoise. Everyone was calling out "There's one!" "Look over there!" "Look! Look!" It was exciting. All the time, Barbara and Judy were busy clicking away. They were finding that photographing porpoises presented a real challenge. They'd be all set, cam- eras ready, and their elusive subjects would surface for a breath of precious air and be gone before they could focus on them. Nevertheless, we enjoyed their playing hide and seek with us. It was a perfect day to be out on the water. The pontoon boat with its bimini to keep the sun off us made a combination that couldn't be beat. For bait we used the biggest shrimp, some almost six inches long and as lively as if they'd just been taken out of the water. (Capt. Kathe's husband is a shrimper and keeps the best for her fishing parties.) a while one would slip out of your hand as you were baiting your hook. No sooner did it touch the deck than the little spaniel was on it. I'd only seen this feat of a dog eating live fish once before. It was when friends of ours many, many years ago were camping in a pasture somewhere by Sill's Dairy in Greenport, near the bay. Someone had a haul seine that they pulled in a great circle from a bolt toward shore. When they got tht net to the shore, I Couldn't there were the fish thrashing believe a dog in the net. Then, „ would rush and here's the part I couldn't in and grab a believe, a dog fish and take — I don't know off with it. whose — would rush in and grab a fish and take off with it. Then he'.d drop down on his haunches, the fish between his paws and proceed to eat it, bones and all. What made it so unbelievable to me was the fish it was eating was a porgy, one with long sharp spines. Anyone who has ever cleaned a porgy knows what I'm talking about. I'll never forget that incident, and now I was watching this little spaniel doing the very same thing on a smaller scale. pup -pup would picK up any snrunp that fell to the bottom of the boat and it was down, shell and all, before you knew it. We had to watch not to let an bait shrimp that was on our hooks fall inside the boat! Pup -pup also had to check out every fish that was brought . on board, licking it all over! Tom was the fisherman of the day, for he caught two monstrous sheeps- head; I came back empty- handed. There were other fish that were under size and had to be thrown back in, but that's fishing. We lost our bait time af- ter time to small , pesky fish that were and to hook. Barbara and Tom both ere able to hook one of those pesky `robbers," which turned out to be mall sheepshead. The water was so clear it tempted us to jump in, but that would have to wait Another time Barbara saw a good -size fish follow her bait up to the boat, but no luck luring it in. Judy spent the day capturing it all on film. In all we had a great day out on the water. Almost everyone caught fish, some legal, some had to be thrown back. Even Pup -pup enjoyed the day with an occasional esh shrimp to eat.