Bunker on the Rocks, Fluke in the Back — Jones Inlet Splits Down the Middle
Big bass are eating chunks at the jetties while the fluke bite runs hot in the rivers and cold at the inlet mouth — here's how to fish both.
We came out of last week with the bay finally shaking off that stubborn spring chill, and you could feel it change day to day. Wind sat in the south for a good stretch, which always does two things around here — it pushes warm water up onto the flats and it makes the outgoing at the inlet mouth turn into a washing machine. That combo explains the split personality I'm seeing right now: fish stacking up in the back rivers and bay guts, and a tougher, junkier bite right at the throat of the inlet where that south wind is fighting the tide. We're coming off a moon that's still building toward the next quarter, so tides have been moderate — not the big spring push you get around new and full — which means less water movement to flush bait out of the back bay and more time for it to sit and get worked over by fluke and small bass. That changes this week too, once the moon fills out again the tides will get more current under them, and that's usually when the inlet mouth itself starts producing again instead of the rivers.
For now, my money is in the rivers and channels off Freeport and up through Sloop Channel, where the fluke have been showing up in numbers that make you forget how frustrating June was. Guys drifting the deeper bends off the Freeport river mouth this week are into fluke on almost every pass — a lot of shorts mixed with enough keepers to make it worth staying with it. Pink and white bucktails tipped with Gulp, or a simple spearing/squid strip on a Lep rig with a white Gulp teaser dropped behind it, has been the combo doing the damage. Water there felt noticeably warmer than it did even ten days ago, and warm water plus current seams equals aggressive strikes — guys are describing fish hitting hard on the drop, not just mouthing bait. That's a good sign for the next couple weeks as more water pushes through and the fish spread from the rivers back out toward the inlet proper.
The ocean side of the inlet mouth, though, has been a different animal. Fishing right at the end of the outgoing into the start of the incoming — usually a money window here — has been slow and scratchy the last week, mostly shorts with a stray keeper. I think that's the wind-against-tide chop we had messing with the drift and keeping the bigger fluke tucked tighter to structure than guys were fishing. If you're set on the ocean side, work the deeper edge along the Short Beach flats on the last two hours of the outgoing, slow-rolling a heavier bucktail — 3/4 to 1 ounce — to hold bottom in that push, and be patient. It's not automatic right now.
Where things have gotten genuinely exciting is the bass. Bunker have been thick along the beach and pushing into the inlet, and that's pulled some serious fish up onto the rocks. Word out of the Atlantic Beach jetty line — right at the mouth of Reynolds Channel, essentially our western doorstep — was a striper pushing 48 inches and better than 40 pounds came off fresh bunker chunks on the back side of that jetty. That's not a fluke catch, that's a fish that tells you there's a real push of big bass shadowing those bunker schools along the whole south shore right now, Jones Inlet included. If you're set up on the Jones jetty rocks or working the Short Beach side with a fish-finder rig and a fresh bunker chunk soaking on the bottom, fish it right through the tide change — dusk into the first two hours of dark has been the window, when the current slacks enough for those big fish to sit and feed instead of just running the bait line. Keep a rod rigged with a bunker head too; some of the better fish have been coming on the head half fished off the bottom rather than a straight chunk.
Weakfish are still the story nobody wants to jinx, but they keep showing. A 26-inch, better than 7-pound weakfish came out of the Fire Island Inlet surf recently on a big sand eel imitation, and that's consistent with what I'm seeing locally — weakfish moving through on the same bait lanes as the sand eels and small bunker. If you want to chase them here, fish the first hour of gray light right in the inlet current, bouncing a bucktail tipped with a 6 to 9-inch soft-plastic sand eel along the bottom edge of the channel drop-off. It's not a numbers game yet, one or two fish a trip if you're lucky, but the size class has been good, and that's the kind of comeback sign worth paying attention to.
Looking ahead, I want to see what the tides do once we swing toward the next quarter moon — bigger tides should start flushing more bait out of the back bay and refresh that inlet mouth fluke bite, so I'd keep half an eye on the rivers and start easing back toward the ocean side drift by the weekend. If the bunker stay thick along the beach, which they've been all week, I'm fishing bunker chunks on the jetty rocks at last light no matter what else is going on — that's where the size is right now. Plan B if the bass go quiet is back in Sloop Channel with bucktails, because that bite hasn't let up yet.