After the Summer Swells

Go to Scotto's Italian Pork Store on Main Street and get a hero or a cold pasta salad for a lunch on the water, and for about $100 Haynes will rent you a boat, motor and everything else you need for a long day's fishing on Shinnecock Bay. "Fluke, blues, bass, they're all right out there," Haynes says. "People talk about Montauk, but the fishing here is fantastic."

People do talk about Montauk, 40 minutes away in the off-season, repeating the local refrain that it's a quaint drinking village with a fishing problem. They talk because Montauk is on par with the Florida Keys or Central America when it comes to sport fishing. Captain Tom Cusimano, 39 -- who started out as a mate on party boats when he was 12 -- is the skipper of the Sea Wife IV, a new charter boat that can entertain parties from four to 20. If you're interested in sport fishing, Captain Tom says, "October into November has the best weather and the best fishing. Sunny, cool, crisp days, and I mean dynamite fishing. It's the best time to be out on the water."

You can go a mile out for striped bass that will want to pull you in with them, or go up to 30 miles offshore for the heavyweights such as mako, blue, thresher or hammerhead sharks and yellowfin tuna. All you need are "sunglasses, a sweater and be ready to have fun," Cusimano says.

It's impossible to take even a short drive and not see someone fishing. On the Shinnecock Canal, a narrow passage connecting Great Peconic Bay with Shinnecock Bay, families are out every day with beach chairs, brown-bag lunches and lines in the water. Even 5-year-olds hold short poles, meditating on the depths. Across the canal, nestled along the bank at the base of a steep hill, is Tide Runners, a good place for a meal, drink and conversation.

At the outside bar, with lights falling on the swift-running channel, the place is especially pretty at night. A railroad bridge seems to float over the canal, positioned as if a painter were balancing a night scene.

The talk is good from people who have been out on the water. Recently one sunburned man and his buddy were talking about a day's fishing and overheard three people discussing Mel Gibson. The first sunburn said, "I think he was psychologically abused by his father." The second sunburn, after a long, quizzical pause: "So? Who wasn't psychologically abused by his father?" And a discussion of bigotry and shame turned to laughter, and two more voices joined a conversation.

Once you've caught some fish and they've been cleaned, call Devin Meehan, 34, chef/owner of Rosemary's on Main Street. At the neighborhood Italian restaurant with New Age touches, Meehan -- whose Italian grandmother taught him to cook -- will prepare the fish for you. His light, creative touch with every dish is Manhattan-worthy. "Great recipes are like legacies," Meehan says. "The basis of my cooking was handed down to me, and I've added to it."

The large room is decorated with the work of local artists, and the large front windows often have watercolors of still life. This is a place for a long, leisurely lunch or dinner, but Meehan also says "it's a place for dessert and espresso or cappuccino after the movies. Or after work, people come in for an appetizer and a glass of wine."

Artists who have work displayed in Rosemary's also are on exhibition at the Artisan Gallery right around the corner. Owner Marc Fasanella's gallery is filled with both expensive and affordable art. Everywhere you look, your eyes are delighted and stimulated by beauty and inventiveness. Particularly striking is the metal work of Fritz Cass, who has lived in Hampton Bays since 1982. Born and raised up island, Cass says he was taken out east by his grandfather from age 4 "to go over the dunes and surf-cast for stripers early in the morning."

Several of his large sculptures are schools of baitfish in the shape of a crescent moon. "The crescent moon is the best time for stripers," Cass says. "There aren't as many people out like at the full moon."

His house on a quiet street has a view down a neighbor's driveway that ends at Shinnecock Bay. His front yard and garden is populated by silvery metal fish, large, small and schooled up, swimming in an untamed sea of green lawn and through reefs of vegetation. He lived in New Mexico for a few years but realized something was missing. "It took me a while to figure it out," he says on one sleepy autumn afternoon in his garden. A perfectly poised and fragile steel heron hunts nearby in a stand of black-eyed Susans. "Finally, I realized: No water.

"You don't even have to go to the ocean every day," the sculptor says. "But you just have to be near enough to feel it, and know it's close."

Ambrose Clancy last wrote for Travel about winter in Ireland.