New moon springs push bass and fluke to the Rockaway Inlet seam

Last week the bay did what it does every July when the sun sits on it too long — it got soupy. We were seeing surface temps pushing into the high 70s in the back stretches by Canarsie and up toward Mill Basin, and that kind of warm, slow water pushes bait and predators both toward anything with current and depth. The wind sat mostly out of the south and southwest through the middle of the week, which didn't help — it piled warm water against the north shore of the bay and left things stagnant in the coves. But the outgoing tide at the inlet has been a different story entirely. Cooler ocean water — I'd put it around 71 degrees on the upwelled push — has been flooding back through Rockaway Inlet on the ebb, and where that cooler water meets the warm bay discharge, that's where the life is. That thermal seam right off the Marine Parkway Bridge and down through Beach Channel has been the most consistent thing going.

This week the moon's the story. We're riding into a new moon with springs building toward peak alignment on the 11th through the 13th — bigger swings, faster water, and critically, the PM flood is now lining up with sunset. That's the first evening high-water-at-dusk window we've had since the June full moon, and if you fish this bay you know what that means: bass push up onto the bridge pilings and the Breezy Point rips right as the light goes gold, and they stay committed longer because the tide's still building instead of already slacking off. I'd circle Friday evening through Sunday evening for that reason alone.

Fluke have been the more dependable bite through the week, but they've moved. The bay interior, especially the flats off Ruffle Bar and up toward JFK, got too warm and too soft — slow water, low oxygen, fish just weren't committed. What's happened instead is a hard shift toward the channels and the inlet itself. Beach Channel, the deeper cuts off Cross Bay Bridge, and the drift down through Rockaway Inlet proper toward the Coast Guard station have been holding keeper fluke in 18 to 28 feet. Chartreuse and white 3/4-ounce bucktails tipped with a strip of squid or a 4-inch Gulp Swimming Mullet, dragged slow on the last two hours of the outgoing, has been the play. A couple of guys pulled fish in the 4-to-6-pound range off the Cross Bay rip this week, nothing like that 12-pound door mat that got weighed up in Jersey a couple weeks back, but solid, honest fluke for a bay that's been running warm and difficult most of the season. If you're going to fish the bay interior at all, do it early — first light before the sun gets on the water, working the deeper holes off Grassy Bay with bucktail and Gulp combos before the fish slide back to the channels.

Stripers have been a night-and-morning game at the bridge. Marine Parkway is still the spot — fish are staging on the outgoing tide, holding tight to the pilings and the shadow lines, and they're eating bunker chunks fished on a fish-finder rig, or if you want to work artificials, a white bucktail with a curly-tail trailer bounced along bottom in that 15-to-20-foot depth right off the fenders. Nothing giant — most of what's coming over the rail is schoolie to mid-20s — but it's been steady enough on the right stage of tide that I'm not complaining. With the new moon springs peaking this weekend and that sunset flood lining up, I'd put real money on the evening bite at the bridge being the best two-hour window of the week. Bring bunker chunks and be ready to switch to bucktails if the current's too soft for bait to sit right.

Bluefish have started showing in the back bay in decent numbers — cocktail blues, mostly one to three pounds, but aggressive, chopping up anything shiny. Canarsie Pier and the flats off Beach Channel have both had pop-up blitzes in the early morning, and small metal — quarter-ounce Deadly Dicks or a Kastmaster — has been money when they're up top. If you see the birds working off Broad Channel, don't wait, that bite doesn't last long once the sun's fully up.

Weakfish, I have to be honest — still not much to report. Water's been warm enough by any old-school standard, but the bite just hasn't materialized in the bay this year, same story I'm hearing from Delaware Bay guys who've had 70-plus-degree water for over two weeks with nothing to show for it. I'm not chasing that pattern right now. Porgies have been fair off the rocks near the Rockaway wrecks and the jetty rip at Breezy Point, small stuff mostly, bloodworms or squid strips on a hi-lo rig in 20 to 30 feet.

Looking ahead, I'd fish this weekend's evening flood at Marine Parkway hard — the moon and the tide are doing exactly what you want for a bridge bite, and I haven't seen that alignment in almost a month. If the bass don't show or the current runs too hard off the new moon push, my backup is the Cross Bay fluke drift on the last of the outgoing — that fishery's been the more reliable of the two all month. Surfcasters at Rockaway Beach and Breezy Point, keep an eye out — there's early bonito and false albacore chatter working up the coast from the eastern inlets, and if that warm plume keeps pushing west the way it has been, we could see the first fall-run visitors early. Nothing confirmed on our beach yet, but I'll be watching the birds off Breezy every morning I can get out there.