New moon springs push bait through Plum Gut, stripers stack the current lines

Been a funny week out here, the kind where the water tells you one thing in the morning and something else by supper. We had that blow roll through midweek, kicked up a chop off Horton Point that had the party boats staying tucked in, and it stirred the bottom enough that the guys running bucktails close to the rocks were coming up with a little color in their water instead of the gin-clear stuff we had through June. That's settling now. Wind's backed off, and we're heading into a new moon — springs building through the weekend, biggest tides we'll see till the next new moon in August. That matters more than people think. Bigger tide swing means more water moving through Plum Gut and the Race on every stage, and more water moving means more bait getting pushed and pulled past every rock and rip on this shore. Bass and blues don't have to go looking for supper this week. Supper's coming to them.

Water's been running warm — bay side especially. Peconic's pushing up near 78, 79 degrees in the shallows, and that's too warm for a fluke's taste. What that's done is shove the fluke out of the bay proper and into the channels and inlet mouths where there's still some exchange with the Sound. Mattituck Inlet has been the beneficiary. The Sound side water coming in on the outgoing is running cooler, cleaner, and the fluke have parked themselves right where that cold water meets the warm — which this week has been the deeper hole just inside the jetty and the drop-off where the channel dumps out past the breakwater.

Stripers are the real story though, and it's a Plum Gut story more than anything. With these new-moon springs, the current through the Gut and around Orient Point is running harder and longer on both the flood and the drop, and the bass are sliding into the eddies behind the rock piles to let the bait wash by them instead of chasing it out in the open water. Guys working bucktails — the half-ounce to one-ounce white and chartreuse, tipped with a strip of squid — drifting through the Gut approach on the last two hours of the incoming have been finding schoolies to keeper-size fish, twenty-six to maybe thirty-four inches, holding tight to the bottom structure. Eels, if you can still get them fresh, have been the better bait after dark right off Orient Point where that rip forms on the ebb — a couple of better fish, high thirties, came off there working the slack right before the tide turned.

The piece of this I like best, though, is what's setting up for the next few days. We've got a window opening Friday through Monday where the evening high tide is going to stack right up against sunset — that's the kind of alignment that gets bass moving up onto the shallower structure to feed right as the light goes soft. I'd be looking hard at Rocky Point and the rock piles off Horton Point in that last hour of daylight into the first hour of dark, working topwater plugs or a swimming plug like a Bomber Long A worked slow across the surface where the rocks break the current. That PM flood-into-sunset window hasn't set up like this since before the full moon back in June, and when it lines up right on this shore, it's as good a bite as we get all summer.

Bluefish have been mixed in wherever the bait's thick — mostly cocktail size, a pound and a half to three pounds, snapping bucktails and diamond jigs worked fast through the rips off Rocky Point and out toward the Gut. Nothing to write home about size-wise, but they'll keep your arms tired and they're honest fighters. If you want a bigger blue, work slower and deeper — the ones pushing five, six pounds have been coming off the bottom on chunk bait, fresh bunker chunks fished on a fish-finder rig in the deeper water off Orient, mostly on the tide change when things go quiet up top.

Porgies are around structure all along this stretch — Horton Point, Rocky Point, the rock piles inshore of the Gut — small hooks, squid strips or clam, bottom rig, nothing fancy. Decent numbers, nothing huge, but a fine way to fill a cooler while you wait for the tide to turn favorable for the bass.

Now the honest part. Weakfish — I keep hearing folks ask, and I keep having to tell them the truth: nothing. Water's been warm enough for weeks now, warmer than what the books say weakfish like, and still not one solid report has come across the docks out here. Warm water alone doesn't make a weakfish bite. Whatever else needs to line up for these fish to show hasn't lined up yet, and I wouldn't burn a tide targeting them specifically right now. Blackfish are off the table too this time of year on this shore — save that gear for the fall.

Looking ahead: if these new-moon springs hold their strength through the weekend the way they're shaping up, I'd put my time in at the Gut approach on the last of the incoming, and I'd have a rod rigged for that sunset flood window at Rocky Point just in case the bass push up shallow like they should. If the wind stays down. That's the one variable that can undo all of it out here — one afternoon of southwest breeze and that Gut current turns into a washing machine nobody wants to fish. Watch the flags before you commit.