The Deep Water Off Montauk

Captain Dave Ryba had fished the waters off Montauk, Long Island for twenty-three years. He knew every sandbar, every current, every spot where striped bass gathered in October. So when a marine biologist from Stony Brook University stepped aboard his charter boat in 2019 and suggested he drop his lines two miles east of his usual grounds — over a deep trench Dave had always avoided — he nearly laughed.…