New moon springs stack the Race and Plum Gut for the first real evening bass window since June

Last week the moon was still working down off full, tides were moderate, and the fishing matched — decent but not urgent. That's changed. We're sliding into new moon now, and the springs are building fast. By midweek the current through Plum Gut and The Race is running harder on both stages, four to five knots on the peak of the ebb and flood, and that extra push is exactly what turns this water from good to violent. Bay water on the western side has been sitting hot, high 70s in the Peconics and the back bays, and that heat has done what it always does this time of year — it's pushed the fluke out. They're not sitting in the bays anymore. They've moved to the inlets and the ocean-side channels where cooler, cleaner water is getting pulled through on the tide.

This week is about timing. New moon peaks Saturday through Monday, July 11–13, and the flood tide is lining up with sunset on that stretch — the first evening high-water window we've had since the June full moon set up the same way. That's not a small thing out here. When the flood stacks bait against the rocks right as the light goes flat, the bass push up out of the deeper current lanes and feed hard in the eddies for that last hour. Miss the tide by ninety minutes and you're fishing empty water. Get it right and you're into fish that have been holding down in 30 to 50 feet all day and are finally willing to come up.

Striper fishing itself has been honest work, not a gimme. I've had nights at Valiant Rock and the western tip of The Race where the eddy behind the rip was stacked and we boated fish to the high 20s on 3-ounce bucktails — white and chartreuse, tipped with a squid strip — worked slow through the seam where the fast water folds back on itself. Other nights the same spot on the same tide stage produced two fish in three hours. The difference has been current speed, not lack of fish. When it's ripping too hard, the bass tuck down out of the lane and you need to slow-roll right on the bottom edge of the eddy to find them. Off Orient Point, the rocks have been giving up fish to big pencil poppers worked at the top and bottom of the tide change, right in that window when the current goes soft for twenty minutes. That's when the bigger fish show — the 30-plus class, the ones that don't want to fight a 5-knot rip to eat.

Bluefish have been reliable and mean, which is how I like them. Choppers busting bait on the surface off Orient Point and through Plum Gut on the outgoing, easy to find by the birds working the slicks. Bunker chunks on wire leader if you want quality, Hopkins jigs or any heavy metal if you just want steady action. Snapper blues are mixed in close to the docks and moorings around Fishers Island, which tells me the bigger class is still working its way through — worth checking again in another two weeks once they push further up the Sound.

Fluke have been the more consistent story of the week, honestly, because they're doing exactly what warm bay water makes them do — they're pinned in the current lanes at Plum Gut and The Race, holding on the humps and drop-offs in 40 to 60 feet. Drifting white Gulp Swimming Mullets on ¾ to 1-ounce bucktails on the outgoing has been the play, keeping the bait ticking bottom and working the drift slow through the deeper structure off the Gut's eastern edge. Nothing giant — most fish have been in the 16 to 19-inch range with a few keepers mixed in — but it's been a fish-a-drift kind of bite on the right stage of tide, which beats grinding for one bite an hour.

Porgies have stayed dependable around the reef structure off Fishers Island and inside the Gut on sandworms and clam, bottom rigs, small hooks. Not glamorous but it's the kind of bite that fills a cooler while you wait for the tide to turn for bass.

Weakfish are the one I keep getting asked about and I don't have good news. Water's been above 70 degrees for over two weeks now, which used to be the number that mattered, but I'm not seeing it and neither is anyone else out here. That threshold isn't the trigger it used to be — something else has to line up, and right now it isn't. I wouldn't burn a tide targeting them specifically.

Looking ahead, the Saturday-through-Monday window is where I'm putting my time. If the wind stays out of the southwest and lays down by evening — which is the typical pattern this time of year — the flood at Plum Gut and The Race should stack up right at last light for three straight nights. That's a rare enough alignment that I'd plan around it rather than fish it as an afterthought. My plan is eddy behind Valiant Rock on the front half of the flood, then slide to the Orient Point rocks for the tide change and work poppers through the slack. If the bass don't cooperate — and with a 5-knot rip that's always a possibility — the fluke drift at the Gut is the fallback, and that bite hasn't let me down yet this month.