New moon springs load up the thorofares as bass and mackerel push through on the rip

Last week the wind sat mostly out of the southwest, which is about the best thing that can happen to this coast in July — it pushes the warm surface skin offshore and lets the cold water underneath do its work. Surface temps in the outer bay have crept up into the low-to-mid 60s, but drop a bait past 40 feet in Two Bush Channel or off Matinicus and you're still fishing water that feels like May. That split — warm top, cold bottom — is exactly the setup that stacks bait against the ledges and holds groundfish tight to structure instead of scattering them.

We're running up on new moon — peak build the 13th and 14th — which means the tides are stacking into full springs by the weekend. More water moving means harder current through the thorofares: Fox Island, Merchant's Row, the Muscle Ridge Channel. That current is the dinner bell. Bass and mackerel stack on the downstream side of the ledges and feed hard on the last two hours of the ebb and the first hour of the flood, right when the rip is screaming and bait gets pinned against the rocks. If you've only got one window to fish this week, that's the one — outgoing tide, moving toward the new moon, current at its strongest.

Striper fishing has been honest work, not a gimme. Guys working the mouth of the Kennebec and the Sheepscot on the last of the outgoing are finding schoolies to 24 inches and the occasional keeper mixed in, mostly on 3-ounce white bucktails bounced along bottom in 15 to 20 feet, or live mackerel drifted under a slip float if you can catch your own bait first. The fish aren't concentrated — you're covering water, working the seams where the river current meets the salt, and you might go two hours between bites and then get three fish in fifteen minutes when the tide finally lines up. That's been the pattern all week. Patience, not volume.

Mackerel have been thick enough around the outer Boothbay islands and off Ram Island that you can fill a bait bucket in twenty minutes most mornings — Swedish jigs or a simple mackerel tree dropped to 25 feet and worked with short hops does it. That's good news beyond the pan, because live mackerel is the single best bait going right now for the bigger bass holding around Eastern Egg Rock. The puffins are still working there, and where the puffins are diving, there's bait, and where there's bait, stripers are cruising the edges picking off stragglers. Anchor up-current of the rock on the last of the flood, put out a couple of live mackerel on fish-finder rigs, and be patient. Bluefish have started showing in that same water too — first real reports of the season, mostly schoolies in the 2 to 4 pound class chopping bait on the surface at dawn. Nothing like the blitzes you'll see in August, but it's a start, and it usually means more are staging offshore.

Groundfish have been the more reliable story, if you're willing to run for it. Cod and pollock are holding in the deeper channels of Penobscot Bay — Two Bush, the deep water off Matinicus, and the north side of Monhegan in 70 to 90 feet — right on that thermocline break I mentioned. Diamond jigs in the 6 to 8 ounce range, worked with a short lift-and-drop right off bottom, have been taking pollock steadily and cod in the 20-to-25-inch range mixed in, with the occasional better fish pushing 30. Haddock are scattered but present on the same structure a little deeper, 90 to 120 feet, and clam bait on a standard cod rig still out-produces jigs for them when the current's really moving. The key on all of it right now is fishing the slower part of the tide — dead low to the first hour of the flood — because with springs building toward the new moon, the mid-tide current in those channels gets strong enough to sweep your jig sideways instead of straight down, and you spend more time untangling than fishing.

Monhegan itself has been quieter than I'd like for this time of July, honestly. A few boats have found stripers working the ledges off the southwest side on bait pushed up by the tide, but it's been hit or miss — some mornings stacked with fish, others dead calm and empty. I'd treat Monhegan as a bonus stop on the way out to deeper water rather than the destination itself this week, unless you're specifically chasing that ledge structure at first light on a dropping tide.

Looking ahead, the new moon springs building through the weekend should sharpen up the bite in the thorofares and channels — more current, more bait movement, more reason for bass and mackerel to commit. If the southwest wind holds and doesn't kick up a chop, I'd put my money on the outgoing tide at Fox Island Thorofare Friday or Saturday evening, live mackerel out, and see what shows. Groundfish guys, I'd stick with the deep channels on the slower tide stages — that cold bottom water isn't going anywhere soon, and the fish know it. Plan B if the bass don't cooperate is always the jig bite on Two Bush — it's been the steadiest thing going all week.