60+ pound bass in Montauk.
Hot shark bite going on.
Lots of sea bass, porgies and fluke to be caught.
Weakfish bite continues to produce.
Paul at River Bay Outfitters in Baldwin heard about some good fishing in the peconic from Mikey S and Elwood Flies Bill. These guys hit the river with their kayaks and happened upon some huge, dinner plate sized crappie.
A customer Big Tom went to the Connetquot this week and did okay. The key was constantly switching flies. Catch a fish, then switch your fly.
In his local saltwater, Paul says the bluefish herd is thinning out. There are still a good amount of cocktails, but the gators have mostly abandoned ship. Duck Dennis did all right plugging the early morning tides near Hewlett.
Kathy from Freeport Bait & Tackle had a report from Captain Jason Fosco of Cannonball Charters. He has a very successful trip offshore, catching a few Makos.
Captain Ray of “Carolann P charters” also fished for sharks, but he ended up catching a Great White fishing near the Mudhole. Yikes.
The hot bite this week was the seabass. Guys were getting them at the Cholera bank and the Mcallister Reef.
The fluke bite has been decent. One customer came in the other day excited about the bite he had just been on on the back side of Jones Inlet. He said he was catching fluke hand-over-fist.
It is tough to come by good fishing tackle these days. Some huge tackle shops are closed, and many big manufacturers have not been able to deliver product to local shops. Freeport B&T has been doing a great job of working around that obstacle, building their own rod/reel combos and capitalizing on inventory when it becomes available. If you need Gulp, look no further. If you need a rod/reel combo, they can help get you out fishing.
Bay Park Fishing Station in Oceanside had a bunch of reports before the weekend regarding some outstanding fluke fishing. Captain Chris and Bull of “Piscator” fished Debs inlet on Thursday with a KO fluke killer rig, and boated a nice six pound fluke.
The next day, Mike, Christian, Michael and Alex of Valerie Lynn fished the incoming by buoy 5. They caught about 15 fluke, and Christian had the biggest at 21.5 inches. He caught that one using Bay Park spearing, cut squid and killer rigs.
On Friday, Jim M. and Charlie F. of Miss Bev fished the incoming around 11am near Lindell School in Reynolds Channel. Bay Park local spearing combined with Gulp bagged them 30 fluke (just 1 keeper) in less than three hours.
Anthony Palazzotto and John Winters of Deluxe fished the Reynolds Channel on Friday, and boated a doormat using Bay Park local spearing, hi-lo rigs and a 3 ounce spro.
Bill at Chasing Tails Bait and Tackle in Oakdale says prime summer fishing weather is here and the fish are active. The bay is loaded with bass, blueish, weakfish, fluke, kingfish and blowfish.
Stripers are feeding heavily on clams and bunker. The ocean is stacked with big fish on the bunker schools. They’re willing to strike poppers, bucktails, SP minnows, swim shads, and mag darters. Same goes for the blues. There’s lots of cocktails lurking, with plenty of choppers. Some serious gators can still be found in the mix. The local docks are getting assaulted constantly by good-sized bluefish.
Fluke seem to be getting bigger by the day, as many more keepers are coming up over the rails. The flats are stacked with fish taking bucktails and spoon rigs, as well as the classic squid and spearing combo. Tip the bucktails with a Fat Cow strip or a Gulp! plastic for some added action to your presentation.
Weakfish are running the tides and taking finesse soft plastics and bucktails. Pink and white are the colors of choice, and the lighter tackle, the better.
The town docks are swarming with kingfish and blowfish, taking clams off the bottom. Some solid blueclaw crabs have already been spotted as well. Snapper season is right around the corner!
Captree’s Laura Lee is looking to the bays for doormat fluking now. They’re still killing the bite out at sea, with hundreds of fluke, red hake and sea bass being caught regularly. Some of those fluke are pretty big, upwards of 5 pounds. Fishing is great on the party boats these days.
Phil at Cow Harbor Bait & Tackle in Northport says the porgy fishing from the beaches is still going strong.
The surf scene seems pretty quiet, but that doesn’t mean there’s not big bass being caught. The bunker schools should still be holding some fish underneath that are up to and above 40 inches. Phil also thinks there’s going to be another run of Hudson fish in the near future. The bite can potentially last until early August.
Some guys are still catching nice bluefish up to about 30 inches. The gators have mostly skipped town. You’ll probably find the biggest local blues out in the Sound chasing sandeels.
The weakfish bite is still cooking. Phil reckons these fish are on sandeels, although the 20-25 inchers he’s seen this week had empty stomachs.
Phil’s friends aboard the James Joseph have been chasing fluke around in 20-30 feet of water. There’s plenty of them there eating sandeels, but if you go into even deeper Sound water you’ll potentially come across some bigger doormats. They’re honed in on the “deeper baits” like peanut bunker, butterfish, sardines and especially squid.
Kenny at Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor heard a couple of stray reports from the ocean beach this week. In the East Hampton area, the bass fishing was supposedly pretty good. One customer was fishing for sharks in that area, and landed a couple browns to 30-40 pounds.
There are loads of blues at Shinnecock inlet, but mostly of the shorter variety. Gators seem to have left. Kenny also heard a report of a solid bass coming in the middle of the day from there.
Fluking has been okay in the harbor. There have been more reports coming from the harbor than from anywhere else.
Sea bass fishing is okay. Guys tend to catch their legal limits, but it’s been nothing to write home about.
There are still loads of porgies around. The larger ones seem to have left (for the most part), but there are still very good numbers of them.
There are lots of weakfish in the peconics. Blowfish reports are down.
Lastly, the inshore tuna bite seems to be slowing down. Kenny says if you’re not at the Coimbra trolling in the early morning, you’re not going to catch a fish. It sounds like you’re probably going to have a whole gang of trollers there with you as well.
Rick from Harbor Marina of East Hampton reports that sea bass are on the menus for most local bottom fishing enthusiasts. Nice catches have been reported from Gardiners Bay to Montauk. Porgies are in the mix, so a nice mixed bag should be attainable for those willing to put in a full tide.
Keeper-sized fluke remain somewhat elusive, but with more folks bottom fishing we should be seeing some better reports after the weekend.
Striped Bass have arrived and lots of folks are reporting some nice catches. Unfortunately, most fish are either over or under the slot. If you are going to cull through some fish to target a slot-fish, please use circle hooks with bait, and lose the trebles on topwater lures. The slot limit is 28-35 inches.
Some nice mako sharks were reported last week on the offshore scene, and bluefin are making sporadic showing south and southeast of Montauk.
Happy Fourth of July!
Long Island surfcasters are vying to take 1st, 2nd and 3rd in Bill Wetzel’s June C&R tournament in the Surf Rats Ball. Joe Taibi just moved into second place with a 46 pound bass taken on a super strike bottle plug the other night. It is second only to Andrea Caruana’s 48 pounder right now. I sense some larger fish will be entered around this coming full moon stretch.
Tanya at Westlake Marina in Montauk says fishing has been good across the board. A nice sea bass came in two days ago, weighing in at 4.65 pounds.
The Striped Bass bite has been awesome. There are lots of big fish being released, but guys have been able to catch their slot-sized fish regularly enough. Customers are dropping eels and diamond jigs to catch them.
Fluking has been okay. There are lots of short fish, with some keepers mixed in.
Tuna bite has been good offshore this past week.
The Montauk Marine Basin tournament occurred this past weekend. There were a lot of small makos that had to be released. Some threshers came in. One of the winning sharks was a tiger shark that weighed in at over 300 pounds. That’s not a normal catch around here, but not unheard of. Certainly terrifying.
Chris from Double D Charters in Montauk says the fishing has been excellent (minus the fluke). Chris heard of some big surf stripers coming in the night. Multiple 50s have apparently been caught along the south side.
Montauk’s Viking Fleet put its charters on some good fishing the past few days. On Tuesday, Captain Chris fished the afternoon flood for fluke, knucklehead seabass and porgies for the plate. The pool fish was caught by Nitiena McGee of Huntington with a 3.5 pound fluke.
Captain Dave found some nice porgies, seabass and bluefish the same day. Alex Kosimidis from PA won the pool on the Starship with a 3 pound porgy.
On Wednesday, Captain Chris had another good day on the same fish. Dan Gersh of Port Washington took the pool with a 3.25 pound fluke.
Captain Dave got into this year’s best porgy fishing just yesterday, on the first drop of the day. Some bluefish also ate. They moved to the wrecks offshore and started cleaning up on the sea bass. Lots of shorts combined with some bigger ones, and jumbo porgies kept rods bent. Benny Niranjan of Queens took the pool with a 3.4 pound porgy. Troy Walken took second with a 4 pound sea bass.
Chris got back out in the afternoon on Wednesday. The fishing couldn’t compete with the day prior’s, but they did manage several big fluke to 8 pounds, along with some seabass and scup.
Long Island Fishing Forecast
I bet most of you have worked a job where you see something so out of whack that you just want to quit. For example, I’ve worked for a number of caterers over the years, and all of them threw countless pounds of good food into the dumpster after the parties. It’s appalling to watch that kind of waste occur. If you see it often enough, you get used to seeing it and become kind of numb to it. Watching something wrong happen, and doing nothing about it feels a bit dehumanizing, to me at least.
And so it went with these fishing reports. The amount of waste I knew was occurring because of the trolling fleets enraged me. Every day there were dozens of huge stripers being weighed dead at the docks. I’ve heard stories from the Montauk guys about dumpsters full of cow bass, many of them uncleaned, killed just for a photo op on the dock. And every week, I had to report them and be like “the cows came home, go get em!”
I’m happy those days are over for now. When I see/hear “40+ inch bass,” it’s referring to a fish that was released. That’s cool. I especially like to hear about the effort and care put into the release. It sounds like a lot of anglers are really trying to do their part to help rebuild the stocks. I’ve heard plenty of lamentations about having to throw back these over-slot fish, calling it a “waste.” But there’s been enough waste, for far too long.
I caught a 33-inch, 15-pound striper in the surf the other day. I kept it to feed some family members. The fillets, a green salad and a little pasta salad satisfied 7 adults. I’m a big, perpetually hungry guy, and my family can eat; that was more than enough fish for all of us.
Here’s a great example of a report I combined from two sources. Chris A sent me a pic of Stephen L’s friend Witt Holmes with a 62 pound bass out in Montauk. The fish was 54 inches long, with a 28 inch girth. Witt’s 6’4” so you know that fish is for real. It was caught on Savio Mizzi’s boat “Fishooker,” on a bucktail Stephen tied. Chris informed me that the crew revived the bass for 20 minutes to make sure it swam away strong. Way to go Witt, and Captain Savio! And props to Adam F for the pic.
That’s how it’s done.
With this full moon ahead, there will be a lot more opportunities to catch big stripers. Do your best to ensure a great release of over-slot fish by fighting the fish quickly, keeping water flowing over its gills and not over-handling it. Best of luck!
On a final note, I wanted to urge people to be careful driving, especially with July 4th coming up and the probable increase in drunk drivers on the road. I crashed into a deer (thing was running faster than I was driving) about a week ago. Kenny from Tight Lines also showed me something very peculiar when I stopped in this week. He picked up a dead otter off the road to give to the DEC. An OTTER, in Sag Harbor! Super cool! Watch out for them, and other wildlife on the road!!
Be safe, tight lines.
It’s the montauk monster!