Bay water tips 79°, and the fluke are bailing straight for the inlet

I checked the bay temp Sunday morning and about spit out my coffee — 78.8 degrees off Sayville flats. That's bathwater. Great South Bay runs shallow and it heats up fast once we get a string of calm, sunny days like we had last week, and that's precisely what happened: light winds, high pressure sitting on us, tide swings modest under the waning moon. Comfortable boating weather, uncomfortable fish weather. Warm, sluggish, low-oxygen water in the back bay pushes fluke and bait right out the door, and that's the story of my week — everything funneling toward the inlet and the ocean side where there's still some cold water coming up off the shelf.

This week the moon's sliding toward new, and that's the piece everybody needs to pay attention to. New moon lands right around the 11th to 13th, which means we're building into spring tides — bigger swings, more water moving, stronger current through Fire Island Inlet on both the push and the drain. For a bay-runner like me that's good news two ways: bigger outgoing tides flush more bait and cooler water out through Democrat Point, and bigger incoming tides push fresh, cleaner ocean water back up into the bay channels. If you've been getting nowhere in the skinny water off Nicoll Bay or West Sayville, stop fighting it — go where the tide is doing the work for you.

Fluke first, because that's the honest headline this week. The bay bite has gone soft — I had two trips off the Meadow Island flats that produced short fish and not much else, water too warm, fish too lazy. But shift to the Robert Moses bridges — the Fire Island side, in that 25 to 35 foot slot between the second and fourth pilings — and it's a different world. Upwelled ocean water sitting around 71 degrees is stacking up against the warmer bay water right at the inlet mouth, and the fluke are parking right on that seam. White Gulp Swimming Mullets on 3/4-ounce bucktails, dragged slow on the outgoing, have been putting keepers in the box, with a few pushing 5 and 6 pounds mixed into the shorts. Don't be shy about tipping the bucktail with a strip of squid — on the slower current stages that extra scent has made the difference between a bite and a look. Democrat Point itself, out past the Coast Guard station where the inlet dumps into the ocean, has also been holding fish on the last two hours of the outgoing — bounce a chartreuse bucktail bounced tight to the sandbar drop, 15 to 20 feet, right where the rip forms.

Stripers have been a mixed bag, which is about right for early July. Dawn patrol on the Fire Island beach — I walked from the Lighthouse Tract east toward Kismet twice this week — turned a handful of schoolies on bucktails and small metal, nothing to write home about, mostly 22 to 26 inches. The better fish are still showing after dark or right at first light, and they're following bunker. There's a decent pod of peanut bunker holding in the bay off Oak Beach and pushing through the inlet on the tide, and where you find bunker balled up tight, especially near the Robert Moses Causeway bridge pilings on the last hour of the incoming, you'll find bass and bluefish working underneath. Snag-and-drop a bunker on a fishfinder rig, or just chuck a big Savage Gear Sandeel through the school and let it sink — I had a solid 31-inch bass do exactly that off the Captree side of the bridge on Tuesday's morning tide.

Bluefish have been the more reliable of the two — choppers in the 3 to 6 pound range are chewing through the inlet on both tides, and they don't seem to care much about the temperature the way the bass and fluke do. Poppers off the surf at Democrat Point at first light have been fun, and if you're bottom fishing for fluke at the bridges, keep a wire leader rigged and ready because the blues will find your bait eventually.

Weakfish — I'll be straight with you, still nothing. The bay's been warm enough for long enough that if they were coming, they'd be here. I'm not chasing that story anymore this summer; warm water alone isn't the trigger everyone hoped it would be. Porgies are around the usual structure — Robert Moses Causeway rocks and the Fire Island Inlet jetty rip — small stuff on sandworms and squid strips, decent action if you just want bent rods with the kids, nothing tournament-worthy. Blackfish season's closed and they're not what you're after in July water anyway.

There's chatter building to our east about the first bonito and Spanish mackerel showing on the ocean side around Moriches and Shinnecock, riding that same clean incoming water everyone's talking about. It hasn't shown at Fire Island Inlet yet, but the water temperature signature moving through matches what we've got, and inlets like ours have a way of getting these fish eventually if the bait stays put. Worth keeping a light spinning rod rigged with a small Deadly Dick in the truck just in case, but I wouldn't plan a whole trip around it yet.

Looking ahead: with the new moon building through the weekend and into next week, I'm expecting the outgoing tide at Fire Island Inlet to run harder and colder, which should keep pulling bay fluke toward the bridges and Democrat Point. If I've got one day to fish, I'm running the Robert Moses bridge on the two hours around peak outgoing, then finishing at Democrat Point for the last of the light with bass and blues on my mind. Bigger tides mean a tighter window to hit it right, but they also mean the fish will know exactly where to be.