Despite frequent “areas of fog,” which remain persistent in the NOAA forecast, the bite is seriously heating up throughout the state. Now that porgy season’s open, there’s fish just about everywhere once again. Stripers have spread around the Island, and anglers are cashing in with nice bass using a variety of techniques. Fluke season continues to impress through less-than-ideal weather conditions, and with the sun slowly returning to the normal weather pattern, it should continue to improve further.
I’d started to hear some rumors of large, 40-pound-class fish back in the western Sound this week, so I made my first call this morning to John from Hudson Park Bait & Tackle. When I asked him if he’d heard about a fish in the low 40s being caught in Hempstead Harbor, his response began, “I can do you one better…” John then rattled on a list of about a dozen numbers into the high 40s. I leaned forward in my chair. “Really,” I said, “so it’s on?” John instantly confirmed. The Western Sound is alive, and big schools of striped bass into the high 40-pound-class are moving with the large schools of menhaden. “Every 2 to 3 bluefish has a bass with it,” John commented, and added that chunking for bass at night improved sharply in the past few days. Lots of techniques are producing fish over 40 pounds: bucktailing, chunking, livelining, trolling swimmers and bunker spoons all have produced strikes from these trophy fish. A lot of the action has been centered in and around Hempstead Harbor, but the action is quickly spreading west and large bass have already appeared in number in Orient and beyond.
I also asked John about the fluking over recent days, and he could report firsthand that the bite is red hot and there are plenty of limits out there to be caught. John had thee keepers to 24 inches and 25 fish overall while bucktailing the Glen Island area. Unfortunately, he also had a run-in with a novice boater and asked me to remind everyone to respect the rules of the water, and added that, “Long Island Sound is a very, very big playground,” I couldn’t agree more.
Richard from Camp Site has been out of town for the last week and a half, but did mention that, “there’s large sand eels to the east, heading west.” There are bass feeding on them, and Richard guessed they’d be in the Smithtown area by now. Definitely a good time to throw some swimming plugs around the more prominent structure of the north shore, soft-plastics in the 6- to 8-inch range would also be effective.
Down on the south shore, I talked to Jeff at White Water Outfitters in Hampton Bays. “Bass fishing is getting better and better,” Jeff said. There’s fish all over the Shinnecock area, although there’s a lot of short fish around. I can attest, I was catching a lot of small 15- to 20-inch schoolies on soft-plastics around the Ponquogue Bridge over the weekend. Jeff noted that, “there’s a lot more bigger bass in the Peconic” right now, and, in an interesting development, Shinnecock Canal is loaded-up with blowfish and Jeff reported you can “fill your bucket” right now anytime the locks are closed. The fluke bite remains consistent in the Hampton Bays area, and the keeper-to-short ratio remains pretty much the only complaint of anglers.
The “Montauk fog” still has a grip on The End, but I checked in with Chase at Montauk Marine Basin to see how the fishing’s been during the small breaks in the weather, “They’re out there,” Chase said and confirmed that poor conditions have been more to blame than a lack of fish. Fluke fishing has also taken a hit from the foggy conditions, but trips getting off the dock are finding some south-side doormats. Miss Montauk had a 10.2-pound fluke this week, one of the first double-digit flatfish of the young season.
Best Bets for the Weekend