New-moon springs reopen the sunset striper window off Cockenoe and Penfield

Last week's blow did what these southwest blows always do on this stretch — it churned the shallow coves and back harbors into soup and shoved the warmest, dirtiest water right up against the beaches from Greenwich Point to the Saugatuck. Norwalk Harbor and Cos Cob were pushing summer temps that fluke don't want to sit in, and that's exactly why I started finding them stacked on the hard structure instead of the mud. The moon's the story for the week ahead — we're building toward new moon on the 11th, which means spring tides loading up fast, bigger exchange at every reef in the zone, and a current that's going to run harder than it has in weeks. That matters because a harder flood means bait gets pinned against structure instead of drifting past it, and predator fish don't have to work as hard to eat. The window everybody's been waiting for since the June full moon is back: the PM flood now lines up with sunset again, peaking Friday the 10th through Monday the 13th. That's the tide I'm building my whole week around.

Fluke have been the more consistent story the last several days, mostly because the warm, stagnant water in the back bays pushed them out to cleaner, cooler structure. I found keeper-class fish to 22 inches working the sand pockets on the east side of Cockenoe Reef in 10 to 14 feet, drifting white Gulp Swimming Mullets on 3/4-ounce bucktails right at the start of the outgoing, when the current picks up enough to work the plastic but hasn't gone slack yet. The cut between Sheffield Island and the Norwalk Islands proper has also been holding fish in that same 12 to 18 foot band — squid strip added to the bucktail hook has been the difference-maker when the bite gets finicky, which it has some afternoons. This isn't a banner fluke week. I'm seeing one or two keepers a trip mixed in with a lot of short fish, so it's a numbers game — you cover water, you don't park on one drift and expect it to produce all day.

Stripers are where the new moon current is going to do the real work. The Cows have been quietly good on the last two hours of the incoming, bass in the 26 to 34 inch range coming off bucktails bounced along the rockpile in 18 to 25 feet, and live bunker on a fish-finder rig has out-produced everything else when there's bait actually stacked on the sounder. Penfield Reef is the spot I want to be for the Friday-Monday window — that rockpile drops from 6 feet on the inside down to nearly 30 on the channel side, and when the spring tide flood pushes hard against it right at sunset, bass come up out of the deeper water to work the edge. Umbrella rigs pulled slow along that drop, and bucktails with a white teaser dropped right on the seam where the shallow rock meets the deeper water, have both been getting hit. I'd rather fish the last hour of daylight into full dark there than any daytime tide — the boat traffic clears out, the current's still moving hard off the new moon build, and the bass feel more comfortable coming shallow.

Bluefish have been scattered but not absent — pods of them showing up off Sheffield Island and along the outside of the Norwalk Islands chewing through peanut bunker schools, mostly mid-morning when the sun's up enough to push bait to the surface. Nothing sustained, more like fifteen-minute windows where everything goes off and then shuts down. If you see the gulls dive-bombing off the Islands, get there fast, because it doesn't last.

Porgies remain the honest bite of the summer — Cockenoe Reef and the rocks off Penfield are stacked with them in that 10 to 20 foot range, sandworms and clam on a high-low rig doing the job like they always do this time of year. It's not glamorous fishing but it's about as close to guaranteed action as this zone offers right now, and it's a good way to save a trip when the bass and fluke aren't cooperating. Black sea bass are mixed in on the deeper edges of the Cows and around Penfield's channel side structure, occasional keepers to 16 inches coming up on the same bottom rigs.

My plan for the week: fish the Cockenoe-to-Sheffield stretch on the morning outgoing for fluke, then shift to Penfield Reef for the evening flood as we build into the new moon peak Friday through Monday. If the wind stays out of the south and lays down like it's forecast to, that sunset window at Penfield and the Cows should be the best striper stretch we've had since the last full moon. If it kicks back up, I've got a backup plan sitting on the porgy grounds at Cockenoe, because that bite doesn't care what the wind's doing. Either way, I'm working around the weekend boat parade — fishing the reefs early or fishing them after the moorings clear out, because a crowded rockpile on a Saturday afternoon isn't worth the trouble when the same spot fishes twice as well at 6 a.m. or dusk.