Fish are starting to hear the dinner bell on the North Fork. Reports of absolute savage bluefish and striped bass fishing are coming in. While that may slow down with changing tides, etc., the bottom-fishing remains plenteous. (Somebody found thesaurus.com.)
In Greenport, Dennis Tinnin from the Peconic Star fleet says that porgy fishing is holding strong with many limits caught. The largest sea bass this week topped four and one half pounds.
A scoop just came in, as I sit here writing, from Dan Buckley on the Orient Star IV. They are putting together an extended range trip on September 5, call to reserve your seat. The captain fished both locally and off Montauk this week, catching the full range of bottom fish, including Dennis Charitin’s eight-pound fluke.
Mike Boccio from the Prime Time III messaged me a terse but effective report, “fishing continues to be excellent.” He then proceeded to send me pictures of coolers full of sea bass, cod, and the one that caught my eye, Raul Rauch holding a 12-pound haddock. Haddock are pretty common north of here, but we don’t often see them in this area. Mike says he has seen a few of these cod cousins out in some deep water wrecks. Nice to see.
Phil Kess’s focus is bottom-fishing out on the Fishy Business, but when the tide is right, there are bass and loads of blues to be found. Billy Gremler Jr.’s charter bottom-fished on Monday and caught 300 sea bass, releasing 160 after catching their limit.
Captain Rob Thompson has declared, “This is it!” All the bait he has been seeing is finally really turning on the stripers and blues. Rob had Keith Wheelock out before the weekend and managed a bunch of cocktail blues, despite poor conditions. Sunday brought the Brooklyn Fishing Club’s Victor and Keith. The pair were caught up in a blitz of bluefish and bass with bucktails and topwaters on light tackle. They then switched over to bottom-fishing and caught porgies, sea bass and even some blackfish (blackfish were released). The fish were on baby squid most of the weekend.
Captain Jon from the Capt. Bob Fleet has been getting some slob porgies on deep water wrecks — some to four pounds. While diamond jigging, the boat has been catching plenty of stripers with a good keeper-to-short ratio. Bluefishing has been absolutely furious off Horton’s Point.
Tight lines everyone!
Brian Nigro is a lifelong avid fisherman and former charter boat captain. He’s fished from Alaska to Mexico and lots of places in between, but his favorite place to fish is right here on the East End.
Questions, comments, tips and boasts? Write to Brian:
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