Fluke Push to the Inlets as Back Bay Water Runs Warm

Last week the back bay ran hot — sod bank water in the mid-to-upper 70s from Absecon Channel down through Great Egg's marsh creeks. That kind of heat doesn't kill the fluke bite, but it moves it. A doormat that spent June camped on a mussel bed in eight feet of Absecon Bay wants nothing to do with 78-degree water come mid-July, so she slides toward the inlet where the tide is pulling cooler ocean water in on every flood. I've watched this shift happen every summer for three decades, and this year it's right on schedule, maybe a week early given how warm June ran.

We're coming off a new moon that built through the week, and by the weekend we're looking at the full push of new-moon springs — the biggest tidal exchange we'll see until the next cycle. That means more water moving through Absecon and Great Egg on every stage, more bait flushed out of the marsh, and more of it staging right where the channels neck down. Peak alignment on the tide lands Friday through Monday, July 10-13, and that's when I want to be positioned on the outgoing at both inlets.

The fluke program has flipped from a bay game to an inlet-and-nearshore game. Best drifts this week have been the Absecon Inlet channel edge, 20 to 28 feet, outgoing water, white Gulp Swimming Mullets on 3/4-ounce bucktails. At Great Egg it's the sod bank drop just inside the inlet mouth where the channel dumps into 18 feet. Guys working the drift slow, dragging bottom instead of hopping it, are getting the better grade. Keeper-to-short ratio has been running maybe one in four, so it's not stacked wall to wall, but the fish that are there are the summer-fat 19- to 22-inch class, not the small ones that were around in May. A few boats pushing out to the nearshore reef structure off Ocean City in 35 to 40 feet are reporting a mix of shorts and a couple pushing 5 pounds on chartreuse-and-white combo bucktails tipped with Gulp.

Striped bass are still mostly an early-and-late fishery — dusk into dark, working the Absecon Inlet rock piles and the Great Egg jetty on the last two hours of the outgoing. Bunker schools have been thick enough in both inlets to hold a few resident fish, and I've had reports of bass to 28 inches on bunker chunks fished on a fishfinder rig right on bottom, current moving. This isn't a blitz fishery right now — it's pick off a couple and go home, which is normal for mid-July with water this warm. The building spring tide should help. More current means more bait pushed past the rocks, and more chances a bass commits instead of sitting deep and sulking through the heat.

Bluefish have actually been the more dependable action of the week. Both Absecon and Great Egg have had blues to 3 or 4 pounds working peanut bunker pushed out on the tide, especially right at the inlet mouths on the first two hours of outgoing. Diamond jigs work, or if you want to save your gear, a chunk of bunker on wire leader. Nothing spectacular, but steady enough that I'd call it the surf zone's most reliable bite right now.

I want to be straight about weakfish, because I know some of you are watching that back bay water sit at 72-73 degrees and figuring the weakfish should be turning on. They're not, at least not that anyone's confirmed to me. We've had warm water in the Absecon and Great Egg marsh channels for going on two weeks now and the reports are still thin — a fish here, a fish there on soft plastics fished on the drop at dusk near the sod banks. Temperature alone isn't flipping that switch this year. If you're going to burn a tide on it, fish the deep holes in the back channels on the last of the outgoing, after dark, with a mullet strip or a Fin-S on a light jig head — but I wouldn't build a whole trip around it right now.

Kingfish, on the other hand, are prime time and solid. Bloodworms and FishBites on a high-low rig, fished in the wash off Ocean City, Sea Isle City, and Stone Harbor — 30th Street in OC keeps producing for whatever reason. Kingfish running 8 to 11 inches, decent numbers on the right stage. I like an hour either side of low, when the trough holds up and the bait stays concentrated instead of getting washed out.

Triggerfish are showing around the Townsends Inlet jetty rocks and the rock piles on Absecon Inlet's north side — small numbers but consistent for guys fishing tight to structure with clam or green crab on small hooks, light enough to feel the pluck before they steal the bait. Not a fishery you plan a whole trip around, but a fun bonus if you're already jigging bucktails near the rocks.

Looking ahead, with the new-moon springs peaking July 11-13, I'd focus the weekend on the outgoing at both inlets — that's when the volume of water moving is at its max and both the fluke and bass programs benefit. If the wind stays manageable out of the southwest, I'd also make one run out to the nearshore reef structure off Ocean City for the bigger fluke grade. And I'm keeping an eye on the bonito and Spanish mackerel corridor that's opened up further north — the warm plume feeding that bite has a real chance of sliding down this way over the next week or two if it keeps pushing south along the beach. No confirmed South Jersey report yet, but the conditions are lining up, and that's a fun wildcard to watch for off the inlets on a clean, calm morning.