New-moon springs load up The Race as bass and blues stack the rip

Last week the Sound was still shaking off the blow that rolled through around the Fourth. Wind held out of the northeast for two days straight, which doesn't sound like much until you're standing on the rocks at Orient watching whitewater stack against an ebbing current that's already running 3-4 knots through Plum Gut. That NE flow did some good, though — it sharpened up the thermal breaks out past the Gut and kept upwelled water pushing into the eastern Sound, which is exactly the kind of cool, oxygenated push that gets bait moving and predators following. Inside the Race itself, current stayed strong on the last quarter tides, and the eddies below Valiant Rock and off the lighthouse held stripers tight to bottom structure through the week — not blitzing, but steady if you worked the seams right.

This week the moon flips the whole picture. We're building into new-moon springs, with the tallest tides of the month stacking up around July 11-13. That means more water moving through The Race and Plum Gut than we've seen since the June full moon, and more water moving means harder current, bigger eddies, and — this is the part that matters — a PM high-stand that's now lining up close to sunset. That's the window I've been waiting on. When the flood peaks right as the light goes gold, the bait gets pinned against structure at exactly the moment predators want to feed before dark. First real evening window like this since June. I'd circle Friday through Monday on the calendar and build your trips around the two hours bracketing that sunset high.

Bass fishing in the Race and the Gut has been solid but not automatic — the kind of week where you need to be in the right eddy on the right stage of tide, not just anywhere with current. Eels have been the difference-maker after dark, drifted or slow-trolled through the seam lines off Valiant Rock and the rip below the lighthouse at Orient, 15 to 25 feet down depending on how hard the current's running. Bucktails in white or chartreuse, 2 to 3 ounces, tipped with a strip of squid, have worked during the day when you can find slower water on the edges of the main flow — think the inside bend at Plum Gut where the current backs off just enough to hold fish without burying your line straight down. Fish have run mixed — plenty in the 24 to 30 inch range, with a few better ones pushing 38-40 pushing through on the stronger tides, mostly at night or in that first hour of dawn light before the sun gets up over Fishers.

Bluefish have been the more reliable player the last ten days. Bunker schools are thick off Orient Point and along the beach toward Fishers Island Sound, and the blues have been all over them on the outgoing — poppers and metal, Deadly Dicks and Hopkins in silver, worked fast through the froth when the bunker get pushed to the surface. I had one afternoon off the Orient rocks where blues in the 8-12 pound class blew up bait for a solid 40 minutes on the last two hours of the ebb before it just shut off like someone flipped a switch. That's typical for this pattern — short, violent windows tied to the tide, not all-day affairs. Fish the last third of the outgoing and be ready to move fast when the surface goes quiet.

Fluke have been shifting out of the back bays and into the inlets and open Sound water, and that's a direct read on water temp — the bays have been running warm, pushing into the high 70s, while the Sound and inlet water stays cooler and cleaner. That's pulled fluke out toward Plum Gut and the drift off Orient Point, where 25 to 35 feet of water on the outgoing has been holding fish. Bucktails in the ¾ to 1 ounce range tipped with 4-inch white Gulp Swimming Mullets, dragged slow along bottom through the drift, have out-produced straight bait rigs this week. Sizes have been mixed — a lot of shorts mixed with keepers to 5 pounds, so you're picking through fish, but the bite's been consistent enough on the outgoing that it's worth the drift time.

Porgies are stacked up on the reef structure around Fishers Island and the rock piles off Plum Island — sandworms or clam on a high-low rig, bottom fished in 15 to 30 feet, has been about as close to a sure thing as this beat offers right now. Nothing glamorous, but if you want a bent rod and a bucket of dinner, that's your play on a slow tide day when the current in the Gut is too strong to fish comfortably.

Weakfish, I'll be straight with you — still not showing. Water's been warm enough for weeks now, well above the old 70-degree threshold everybody used to point to, and there's just nothing out there to show for it. I'm done predicting a weakfish run off that number alone. If they show, they show, but I wouldn't plan a trip around it right now.

Looking ahead, the new-moon springs building through the weekend are the story. If the wind stays reasonable — nothing better than 15 knots out of the south or west — I'd fish the Friday and Saturday sunset flood at the Race and Plum Gut hard, eels after dark, bucktails at first light. If the current proves too strong to fish clean on the peak days, I've got a backup: work the fluke drift off Orient Point on the slower morning outgoing, where the bite doesn't depend on threading a needle through 4 knots of water. Either way there's enough happening on this stretch of the Sound right now to make the trip worth the 3 a.m. alarm.