Fluke bail out of the bays as summer heat pushes them to the inlets

Let me tell you what happened this week — the back bays cooked. Barnegat Bay and the shallow flats up in Raritan pushed into the upper 70s, some spots probably kissing 80, and that's too warm for a fluke to sit comfortable in three feet of skinny water with the sun beating down on it all day. So they did what they always do when the bay gets like bathwater — they packed up and ran for the inlets and the ocean front where there's moving current and cooler water underneath. We got a shot of upwelled ocean water this week too, dropped the front-beach temp down into the low 70s, and that's a gift. Cooler, cleaner water meeting warm bay water at the inlet mouths is exactly the kind of seam that turns a slow week into a good one.

Now look ahead — we're building into new moon springs, peaking Saturday through Monday, July 11th through the 13th. Bigger tide swings, more water moving, more current speed through the inlets, which means more bait getting flushed and more fish stacking up to eat it. The moon's going dark right as those tides peak, so the flood tide in the evening lines up close to sunset this weekend — that's the window I want. When the flood stacks up against last light, bass and blues both get more comfortable coming shallow to feed, and you get that hour where everything just seems to switch on at once. If I only had one evening this week, I'd burn it Saturday on that sunset flood.

Fluke is the story right now and it's a decent one, not a great one — you've gotta work for it. Manasquan Inlet has been giving up keepers on the outgoing, working the seam along the rock jetty in 15 to 25 feet, bucktails tipped with a strip of squid or a 4-inch pink Gulp Swimming Mullet dragged slow along bottom. Guys are finding fish to 24 inches doing exactly that, though for every keeper you're picking through a pile of shorts, so don't expect a five-fish box on autopilot. Barnegat Inlet's fishing similar — channel edges near the Coast Guard station, same deal, outgoing water, bounce the bucktail don't rip it. Sandy Hook's channel and the flats off Horseshoe Cove have some fluke mixed in too, but that bite's spottier — more of a search-and-drift game than a sure thing.

Bluefish have been the bright spot for anybody willing to run bunker chunks. Jumbo blues, real tackle-busters, showing up off the Shrewsbury Rocks and out past Sandy Hook in that 10 to 20 foot depth, hammering chunks fished on wire or heavy mono leader. Topwater's working too early and late — pencil poppers and big soft plastics if you can find them busting bait on the surface, which they have been doing sporadic mornings off the Hook.

Striper fishing, I'll be straight with you, is tough right now and that's normal for July on this stretch. Most of the migratory fish have pushed north into cooler water, and what's left in Raritan Bay and off Sandy Hook is holdover fish — schoolies mostly, some better ones mixed in — and they're playing the night shift. Best bet is fishing the rips off Sandy Hook and around the Chapel Hill and Flynn's Knoll structure after dark, live eels or bunker chunks fished slow on the bottom during that new moon flood. Don't expect a blitz. Expect a few quality bites if you put your time in on the right stage of tide.

Down in Cape May and the Delaware Bay side, black drum are winding down — the run's basically over for the season, a few stragglers left around the reef sites. Weakfish are still a ghost story down there. Water's been sitting well above 70 for over two weeks now and I haven't heard of a single legit weakfish report, which tells you warm water alone isn't the trigger everybody thinks it is — there's something else that needs to line up, and it hasn't yet this year. Porgies are solid and reliable on the reef structure off Cape May in 30 to 40 feet, small pieces of clam on a hi-lo rig, good action if you just want bent rods and a fish fry. Sea bass season closed up on the 21st so that's off the table till it reopens, but sheepshead have been showing in the back bays around pilings and bridge structure for anybody running fiddler crabs.

There's real noise offshore too — yellowfin and some bluefin working the 20 to 30 fathom lines and out toward the canyons, plus the first bonito starting to show at the eastern inlets on clean incoming water. That's a bit outside my beat but keep an ear out, because if that bonito push works its way down the coast the way it usually does in July, Manasquan and Shark River could see Spanish mackerel and bonito mixed in with the blues before the month's out.

My plan for the week: fluke at Manasquan on the outgoing with bucktails, blues on bunker off the Hook in the early morning, and I'm saving Saturday night for that new moon flood-sunset window on the rips. If the tide and the light line up like they should, that's where I'd put my rod in the water first.