New moon springs load up the Sound — early bonito scouts hit the boulder fields as stripers slide into dusk

Last week the Sound did something I don't see every July — that cold wall that usually sits stubborn between the Race and Block Island broke down hard, better than ten degrees warmer on the Rhode Island side almost overnight. My uncle used to call that kind of shift "the water forgetting where it's supposed to be." It matters because that cold wall is normally what keeps the summer albie and bonito push penned up around Block till September. With it gone, the corridor's opening up wide — Newport to Point Judith, and that puts Fishers Island Sound right in the flight path a lot earlier than usual. We're not talking a blitz yet. We're talking scouts.

This week the moon's the story on the striper side. We're riding into new-moon springs, and the tide stacks in this week are the biggest we've seen since before the June full moon — which means bigger push, bigger pull, and a PM flood that's lining up almost dead-on with sunset from tomorrow through Monday. That's the window I've been waiting on all month. When high stand hits right as the light goes gray over the boulder fields, the bass come up off the bottom of the rock piles to feed the last hour, and you don't need to be out there at 2am to get in on it. Wind's been the wildcard — we had some sloppy chop mid-week that turned Fishers Island Sound into washing machine water for a day, but it's laid down since, and with the harder tidal push this week I'd rather fish moving, cleaner water than dead slack anyway.

Stripers first, because that's still the backbone out here. The rock piles off Ram Island and the boulder stretch running out toward Wicopesset have been giving up fish in the 26 to 34-inch range on the last two hours of the flood into that sunset high stand — exactly the window setting up this weekend. Eels are still the closer at last light, but I've had better hookup ratios lately on a black Slug-Go rigged weightless, worked slow over the rocks where the current starts to stack against structure. Wamphassuc Point has been quieter than I'd like — that spot wants a harder current push to really turn on, and with springs building this week it should wake up again. Esker Point is worth a look on the early flood too, particularly if you're throwing topwater — a Gibbs pencil popper worked in the wash off the rocks at first light has produced a few fish, though it's been a grind, not a gimme. Don't expect every tide to produce. I fished four sessions last week and only two were worth writing home about — the other two I covered a lot of rock and came home with sore arms and nothing in the cooler.

Fluke have been sliding out of the harbors and into the current lines, which tracks with what's happening bay-wide — warm, stagnant water in the back coves is pushing them toward anything with real flow. Stonington Harbor channel and the mouth of the Mystic River have both been better on the outgoing than the bay flats have been all month. Four-inch white Gulp Swimming Mullets on 3/4-ounce bucktails, dragged slow along the channel edges in 15 to 25 feet, have taken keepers to 22 inches. If you're drifting the deeper cuts around Fishers Island itself, don't be afraid to tip that jig with a squid strip — the current there moves fast enough that scent helps hold fish on longer than plastic alone.

Black sea bass have been the most reliable meat in the boat, honestly. The rock piles and rubble bottom around the west end of Fishers Island, 30 to 45 feet, are stacked with them right now, and they're not picky — squid on a high-low rig or a small chartreuse Gulp jig both work. That's your consolation prize on a day when the stripers won't cooperate and the albies haven't shown.

And speaking of albies — I've had a couple of quiet, unconfirmed-by-me-personally accounts of bonito showing early around Watch Hill Reef and the outer edge near Napatree, which lines up exactly with that widened corridor I mentioned. I haven't hooked one myself yet this week, and I want to be straight with you: it's too early to call this the run. What it tells me is the door's open earlier than usual, and with water this warm pushing through the Race, I wouldn't be shocked to see real numbers of bones and maybe the first bonito legitimately inside the Sound by late July instead of Labor Day. Worth carrying an epoxy jig or a Deceiver in the boat bag now, just in case you cross into nervous water on the surface.

Looking ahead — if the springs behave the way they're setting up, Saturday and Sunday evening on the flood are where I'd put my time, fishing the last ninety minutes of light on the Ram Island and Wicopesset rock structure. If that window's a bust, my fallback is the Mystic channel on the outgoing for fluke, which has been the more dependable bite of the two. The real wildcard this month is that missing cold wall — it's rewriting the calendar on the pelagic bite, and I'd rather be a week early checking the reef structure for albies than a week late wondering why I didn't look.