Bay's too warm for fluke, so they ran for the inlet — and found company

Last week the bay basically cooked itself. We had that stretch of light, southwest air sitting on top of the flats and the surface water in the back bay pushed close to 79 degrees — I heard 78.8 off one of the buoys and I believe it, because the fluke told me the same thing without saying a word. Fluke don't like bathwater. When the shallow flats get that warm, they slide for anything with current and depth — the channels, the bridge rips, and eventually right out through Rockaway Inlet into the ocean, where an upwelling event over the last week and a half dropped that nearshore water down into the low 70s. That's not a coincidence, that's a thermometer doing the talking. The fish left a hot bathtub for a cooler pool with moving water, same as any of us would on a July afternoon.

Now we're heading into new moon, and that's the piece everybody needs to pay attention to this week. The moon goes dark around the 10th to 13th, which means spring tides — bigger swings, harder push on both the flood and the drain. In practical terms for us, that means the outgoing at the Marine Parkway Bridge and through Rockaway Inlet is going to run harder and longer than it has in weeks, and that current is going to drag bait — spearing, small bunker, grass shrimp — right out of the marsh creeks and past every rip and piling between Floyd Bennett Field and Breezy Point. Big springs also mean the dark-of-the-moon bite at night gets better for bass, because less ambient light means they'll sit tighter under the bridge lights and the structure and wait for the current to bring dinner to them instead of chasing it around in open water.

Fluke first, since that's the story of the last two weeks. If you're still poking around the deeper holes inside the bay — off Ruffle Bar, the flats by Motts Basin, the usual July spots — you're going to find some but it's been a grind, a keeper here, a bunch of shorts there. The better, more consistent fish have been coming from the inlet itself and just outside it, drifting the channel edge on the Breezy Point side and working the deeper cuts where the outgoing dumps into the ocean. Three-quarter and one-ounce bucktails tipped with 4-inch white or pink Gulp Swimming Mullets, dragged slow along bottom in 20 to 35 feet, timed to the last two hours of the outgoing — that's been the play. A few guys working the same water with live killies on a fluke rig have done fine too, especially in that softer water right where the inlet current starts to fan out past the bridge.

Stripers have been a mixed bag, which is honest, not a knock. Schoolie-sized bass are all over the bay right now — Canarsie Pier, the flats off Ruffle Bar, the mouth of Motts Basin — and they'll eat small soft plastics and bucktails all day if you find the bait pods, but very few of those fish are going over 24, 25 inches. The better-class fish, the ones worth the trip, are staging where they always do this time of year: right at the Marine Parkway Bridge on the outgoing, sitting in the current seams off the pilings from dusk into the first couple hours of dark. Bunker chunks on a fish-finder rig fished tight to structure has been the most consistent producer, with eels working better once it's fully dark. With the new moon building through the weekend, I'd expect that bridge bite to sharpen up — bigger tide, more current, more bait getting pushed through, less moonlight for the bass to worry about getting picked off from above.

Bluefish are starting to show some teeth in the back bay, which tracks with what I've heard from farther south — the chopper blues moving inshore as the water settles into summer pattern. We've had reports of blues busting on peanut bunker and spearing around Cross Bay Bridge and off Canarsie Pier, mostly in the last hour of daylight. Metal — Deadly Dicks, half-ounce Kastmasters — cast into the surface activity has been the ticket, and if you're fishing from the rocks at Breezy Point on an outgoing tide with bait moving, keep a popper rigged and ready, because those blitzes can materialize and vanish in twenty minutes.

Porgies are steady if unspectacular — Ruffle Bar and the reef structure around the Silver Hole channel have been giving up decent numbers on clam and sandworm, high-low rigs on the bottom, best on the last of the incoming into the top of the tide. Nothing to write home about size-wise, but a fun bucket of fish if you want dinner and don't need a story.

Weakfish — I'll be straight with you, I haven't heard a real report out of the bay yet this season. Water's been warm enough for a while now, but warm water alone doesn't seem to be pulling them in like it used to. If you're specifically hunting weakfish, I wouldn't plan a trip around it right now.

Looking ahead: with the new moon springs peaking around the 11th through the 13th, I'd be at the inlet or the bridge on the back half of the outgoing, betting the bigger current pulls more bait and more bass with it. If that doesn't produce, my backup is the same drift for fluke right off Breezy Point where the cooler ocean water is holding — that pattern's been more reliable than the deep bay lately, and I don't see a reason for it to flip back until this heat breaks.