Fluke slide out of a broiling bay and stack up in the Jones Inlet cut

Last week the bay got hot — I mean uncomfortably hot for anything with fins. Great South Bay pushed close to 79 degrees on the flats behind Freeport and Wantagh, and that kind of water doesn't hold fluke for long. What it does is shove them somewhere cooler, and around here that means the channels and the inlet itself. Meanwhile the ocean side got a gift from the upwelling — clean water settling in around 71 degrees off the beach, cooler and cleaner than anything you'll find in the back. That's not a coincidence, that's a magnet. Every doormat that got uncomfortable in the shallows behind Short Beach has had two weeks to figure out where the good water is, and they've been sliding toward Jones Inlet and the ocean-side structure to find it.

This week the moon's building toward new, peaking around the 12th–13th, which means the tides are getting bigger every day between now and then. Bigger swings mean harder current through the cut — the ebb out of Jones Inlet is going to run stronger, pulling more bait and more warm bay water out past the jetties, and that outgoing push is exactly the tide stage I want to be fishing. When that current rips through the inlet mouth it stacks bait against structure and gives predators a reason to set up and wait instead of chase. I'm not seeing a hard blow in the forecast, just typical July sou'westerlies kicking up in the afternoons, so mornings before the sea breeze fills in are still your cleanest water and calmest drift.

Fluke has been the most consistent story of the week, and it's a real one, not a rumor. The drift through Sloop Channel and along the edges of the Jones Inlet cut has been holding fish in that 15 to 25 foot range, with the better ones coming on the last two hours of the outgoing when the current has some shoulder to it but isn't ripping your bucktail sideways. White bucktails, 3/4 ounce, tipped with a 5-inch white or pearl Gulp Swimming Mullet has been the standard, though a few guys working chartreuse have done just as well on overcast mornings. Keep the bucktail ticking bottom, short hops, don't work it hard — these fish have been eating on the drop, not the retrieve. Size has been mixed. Plenty of 15 to 17 inch fish getting tossed back, but there've been enough 4 and 5 pounders coming out of the deeper bend by the Loop Parkway bridge and off the tip of the west jetty to make it worth the gas. It's not a slam dunk — I've had drifts where three guys on the boat manage two keepers in two hours — but when you find the seam where that cooler ocean water meets the outflow, it turns on fast.

Striped bass are around, but let's be honest about where we are in the calendar — this isn't the fall blitz yet, and anybody telling you it is hasn't fished the inlet lately. What we've got is a resident population holding tight to structure: the rocks on both sides of Jones Inlet, the drop-off by Short Beach, and pockets along the Wantagh Bridge pilings. Bunker schools have been showing up in patches at the inlet mouth, mostly small and skittish, and where they sit you'll find bass working underneath them at first light and again at dusk. Live bunker on a fishfinder rig, fished tight to the jetty rocks on the last of the outgoing, has produced better than anything artificial this week — fish from the mid-20s up to a stray 30-incher. Bluefish have been the ones actually blowing up on top when the bunker get nervous, and if you want fast action more than size, Deadly Dicks or a bottle-shaped popper worked through a surface blitz at the inlet mouth will get you bit within casts.

Weakfish are the one I want to be straight with you about. There's been talk of a comeback in the bay for a couple seasons now, and the warm water numbers look right on paper, but the actual reports haven't backed it up much yet. I've heard of scattered fish coming out of the deeper holes off Freeport and up around the Wantagh channel on soft plastic grubs fished slow after dark, and I had one drift myself last week that produced two weakfish in the 20-inch class on a bucktail-and-Gulp combo meant for fluke. That's two fish in a week of trying, not a pattern. If you want to chase them, fish the deeper cuts on a slow drift after sundown and treat every one you catch as a bonus, not an expectation. Porgies, for what it's worth, have been steady and reliable around the jetty rock piles and sod banks on standard high-low rigs with clam — not glamorous, but if you want bent rods for the kids this is the play.

Looking ahead, I'm watching two things closely. First, the building spring tide into the new moon on the 12th-13th — bigger water movement through the inlet should sharpen up both the fluke bite on the outgoing and give the resident bass more reason to set up on structure during that harder current. Second, I'm watching how many bunker schools show up at the inlet mouth over the next week. Right now it's pockets, not a wall of bait, but if that changes and we get a real push of bunker stacking up against the jetties, that's the first real signal the fall pattern is starting to wake up early. If I had one trip to make this week, I'd fish the outgoing tide at Sloop Channel for fluke in the morning, then swing over to the west jetty at dusk with a live bunker rig and see if the bass show up to eat. Bring a backup plan either way — this bite has rewarded patience more than confidence lately.