Long Island Fishing Report
This Week:
Return of alewives and ospreys suggest that big freshwater fish will be chewing aggressively on big baits soon.
Holdover stripers come back to life.
Big smallmouth, walleye and largemouth have been biting during the day.
Second round of pre-spawn perch are biting.
Long Island Fly Fishing Expo this weekend.
The Captain Lou Fleet in Freeport has been running seal-watching trips this winter, and will be heading out this Saturday to see what the water dogs are up to. Book with them at their website: www.captloufleet.com.
Point Lookout’s Superhawk is sailing offshore this weekend to do some deepwater wreck trips. They’re targeting jumbo pollack, cod, hake and more in 200-400 feet of water. The trip’s limited to 24 passengers and costs $195. More trips will be posted very soon. Call today to make a reservation: 516-607-3004.
Bill at Chasing Tails Bait and Tackle in Oakdale reports:
It’s officially spring time, and that means it’s time to get back to fishing. Striped bass, tautog, and flounder are the first fish to bite in the salt water. The stripers will be hanging out in skinny water, flats, and back bays eating tons of small baits like spearing. This time of year I like to use small swim baits like a Keitech or a Storm Shad, as well as little jigs. A small bucktail or a jig head with a soft plastic hanging off the back works wonders. If I am fly fishing, I use Clouser minnows and deceivers to mimic the local bait fish. The tautog will be hanging out in their usual rocky structure on their way out to the deep. Hit em with jigs or rigs, tipped with your choice of crab. A rod with a sensitive tip and a whole lot of backbone is key! As for the flounder, they will be held up in the muddy flats. Bring plenty of bait and chum if you want to get on a good bite of these elusive spring time flat fish. Blood worms or sand worms for bait, mussels for chum, and light tackle for the catching. They may be hard to catch but when you do figure them out, it is very satisfying.
In freshwater news, the bite is hot, and only getting better.
Smallmouth bass are out cruising the rocks, largemouth are starting to stage up for spawning, yellow perch are schooled up and biting hard, and all of the local lakes have been stocked with trout. Easiest way to get all of these species is with the classic warm and bobber, however you can get very specific and target each specific species with some deadly lures that will pick them off. For the smallmouth, a jig or a ned rig will do wonders. For the largemouth, toss a jig at them or a Senko, crankbaits are killer this time of year too. For the yellow perch, I like to use Trout Magnet jigs in the bright colors. Trout are hitting silver and gold spoons, in-line spinners, and Trout Magnet jigs.
Captree’s Laura Lee dredged the bottom in 300+ feet the other night, but put together a disappointing catch out there. All they found was a nice-sized pollack, and a few rosefish, seabass and dogfish. On the way home, they hit up some shallower wrecks and found some giant porgies and red hake. The end-of-trip tally was 1 pollack, 6 ling, 4 rosefish, 111 big porgies, 141 sea bass, 5 cunner, 7 silver eels, 2 ocean pout and a slew of dogfish.
Bill Wetzel’s Surf Rats Ball is seeing discussions about folks’ first trips of the year. Some have already made their maiden voyage, and some have even caught their first striped bass of 2022. One angler put in a couple hours in the western LI Sound a few nights ago and lucked into a handful of shorts on an SP minnow. Another angler fished the same region and had one bass. A bunch of other anglers with the same idea reportedly hooked into a bass each in the western LI Sound.
Jerry Ruff of the Fish Your Way Youtube channel battles some heavy winds on an outgoing current by NYC this week to try for some stripes. He was using a sinking line on his fly setup to cut through the wind, and managed to feed a chartreuse/white Deceiver to an early season striped bass! Check out his video here: Striped Bass Fishing a NYC Spring Day – ICE BREAKING – New York City Striper on the Fly
Long Island Fishing Forecast
Howdy folks! It is good to be writing again, and just in time too…
Spring has seemingly sprung. In the past week or two, many ospreys arrived on Long Island. I’ve been hounding my freshwater haunts, and the fish hawks have been keeping me company there. Judging by their blatant preference for sweetwater hunting, it seems there’s not a lot going on in the saltwater just yet. I’ve seen a few over the harbors, but most of the meals I see in their talons are trout, crappie, perch and alewives. Soon enough, menhaden will be their primary forage. If the bunker aren’t here already, they probably will be within the next week or so. Bait is definitely on the move.
Alewives have been heading up brackish creeks into their freshwater spawning grounds for the past couple weeks. I believe the ospreys are favoring them as a primary food source. Big fish are also favoring the herring. Bigger lures have already begun to catch bigger bass in certain spots. It’s not fast action, and the slow retrieve that’s required may result in many snags and break-offs. Losing a bunch of lures will be worth it when a goliath gulps your bait off the sticky bottom, though. There are behemoths biting now. I think this week, I am going to focus some effort on the nighttime bite. Last year I picked my personal best largemouth at night while throwing a big wakebait fly I tied. The 7.5 pounder is one I’ll never forget.
The other bass bite has been awesome lately. I’ve heard it’s the best smallmouth bass bite in years. My friend Chris and I have been capitalizing on the bite, as have a ton of other anglers who are antsy for action. Some solid walleye have made for impressive bycatch while targeting these tiger-striped tough guys.
What works one day often won’t work the next, so come prepared with a variety of offerings if you really want to bend the rod. The same thing can be said for largemouth, pickerel, and yellow perch too. In almost all of the waterbodies I’m fishing, every species has been very finicky this past week. As temps improve and bait species come alive, the action should improve.
It would appear the white perch are capitalizing on the influx of a new food source as well. I witnessed multiple spawns this winter, and then a deep lull in the action immediately following the spawns. Various creeks livened back up just a few weeks later, though, and there are still plenty of pre-spawn perch to catch. The bite this week has been solid. There are some fat fish present for the picking.
In years past, I would count on the smaller water bodies to turn on first. They always did, and I’d catch big fish of just about any species. I’m not finding the same results this year. I’ve had a few fish in those smaller ponds, but the bite is not as ravenous as I feel it should be. I have absolutely no explanation for it either. I have spent more time on the bigger bodies of water as a result. I’ve moved around a lot, and exercised the utmost patience at promising spots, and that has resulted in both successes and failures. As long as I can definitively say whether there are or aren’t some fish in a certain spot, it’s all success to me.
Holdover striped bass are coming alive in certain spots. I think I will see the first migratory bass show up in the surf this next week. Last year they arrived just before April began.
If it’s still a bit too cold for you, there are plenty of good options to stay fishy even without being on the water. I just realized that Richard Siberry’s “Montauk Rocks” is on YouTube as of last year. That’s a great watch, at an hour and twenty minutes long.
This weekend is the Long Island Fly Fishing Expo, hosted by Paul from River Bay Outfitters. There will be lots of anglers tying flies, vendors selling fly tackle, and speakers giving fly-related seminars. I will be one of those speakers!
On Saturday morning at the show, I’ll be giving a talk on fly fishing the surf. It’s going to cover the tactics I describe in this video, as well as the Breakdance, which is my solution to cancel drag in the surf caused by breaking waves: Surf Fly Fish Tutorial – Stripers, Sand Beach, Mending
Check it out, and hopefully I’ll see you at the show! I’ll be at the On The Water table with Assistant Editor Matt Haeffner. My seminar occurs at 9:30am in the Huntington room. For more show info, click here!