Springs build at the Point as bonito show and bass hold to the night tide

Last week the water did what it always does out here in early July — it split into layers and made you work for it. We had that clean upwelled water pushing against the Point, cooler and green, while Fort Pond Bay and the harbor sat warm and soupy from the sun. That thermal seam is why the fluke that were scattered through the bay a few weeks back have slid out to the ocean side and the inlets — they're chasing the cooler, cleaner water, and it's sitting right where we want it, off the Lighthouse and around North Bar in 30 to 40 feet. Wind's been mostly out of the northeast, which sharpens up the breaks along the shelf and keeps bait pinned tight to structure instead of scattered across open water. That's the kind of setup that makes the Point fish like the Point again, instead of just another stretch of beach.

This week the moon swings new, and that means spring tides loading in — bigger water moving through Shagwong Reef, North Bar, and the rips off the Lighthouse than we've seen since the June full moon. Peak alignment lands Saturday into Monday. More water means more current speed at max flow, which sounds good until you realize it also means the bait gets flushed through fast and the bass have to commit hard or let it go by. I like that setup at night, when stripers hold tight in the eddies behind the boulders and let everything come to them. I like it less at midday, when the water's ripping so hard that anything short of a heavy bucktail just gets swept out of the strike zone before a fish can track it down.

Bass fishing right now is honest but not automatic — you have to put your time in after dark. The boulder field off the Point, the stretch between the Lighthouse and Turtle Cove, has been giving up fish to guys soaking live eels on the incoming, especially the two hours either side of the tide change when the current softens just enough to let a fish move off the rocks to feed. I heard of a 50-pounder taken on a bucktail worked slow along the bottom in that same stretch, and a handful of stripers in the 20s and 30s coming to topwater plugs at first light before the sun gets high enough to shut things down. That's the pattern right now — dawn and dark, not noon. If you're set on daylight fishing, work bucktails tipped with pork rind or a white paddle tail along the drop at North Bar on the outgoing — that ledge where the sand falls off into deeper water is holding fish that don't want to fight the current up top.

Fluke have made their move. With the bay running warm, the keepers are stacked on the ocean side — Frisbie's Ledge, the drift off North Bar, and the deeper water south of the Point in the 30 to 40 foot range. White Gulp Swimming Mullets on 3/4-ounce bucktails, dragged slow on the drift, have been the ticket, with a chartreuse teaser above the hook picking up a few extra bites on the slower stages of the tide. This isn't a wide-open bite — you're covering ground to find pockets of keepers mixed in with a lot of throwbacks — but there are real doormats in that mix if you're patient and keep moving.

Bluefish are around in decent numbers, mostly cocktail-sized blues blitzing bait off Shagwong Reef on diamond jigs and small metal, plus snappers thick in the harbor and Fort Pond Bay if you've got kids who want steady action on tiny Kastmasters or bait rigs.

The real story this week, though, is the first bonito and Spanish mackerel showing off the rocks. The cold wall that usually pens the bonito up around Block Island has broken down, and that warm water pushing east has opened the corridor all the way toward us. I had reports of fish busting bait right off the Point on the incoming, small profile metal — Deadly Dicks, half-ounce Kastmasters — worked fast through the wash. It's early and it's not a sure thing yet, but if that warm water holds, we could see a real push of bonito and false albacore working the rip lines by the Lighthouse before the month's out. Worth having a rod rigged and ready if you're out there anyway for bass or fluke.

Offshore, there's been a run of school bluefin south of Montauk that's got small boaters excited, working squid under lights after dark along the 20-fathom breaks. It's not the sustained canyon bite we saw earlier in the week out east, but it's close enough to run for anyone with a seaworthy boat and a good weather window.

Looking ahead, I'd focus on the two nights around the new moon peak — Saturday and Sunday — fishing the boulder field on the incoming with eels, and working North Bar at first light before the spring tide current gets too strong to fish comfortably. If the bonito push holds and that warm water keeps sliding east, the back half of this week could turn into the best light-tackle action we've seen yet this season. Plan A is bass in the dark, Plan B is fluke on the drift, and I'd keep one rod rigged for anything shiny that shows up in the wash.