New moon springs load up the Fort Trumbull rip as stripers set up for the sunset flood

Last week the Thames ran the way it does every July — hot, bright, and slow through the middle of the day, with the real action packed into two tight windows at first light and last light. Water in the upper harbor and up around the Gold Star Bridge has climbed into the mid-70s, and that's pushed the better fish off the flats and into the current seams where there's still some cooler water moving. We had a mild southwest breeze most afternoons, which is enough to ripple the surface and keep the topwater bite honest at Ocean Beach and Pleasure Beach, but it laid down most nights, giving us glass-calm conditions for the after-dark bite around the bridge pilings.

This week the moon's the story. We're building into new-moon springs, with the tightest alignment falling Saturday through Monday, July 11-13. Bigger tidal range means more water moving through the Fort Trumbull rip and around the Gold Star pilings, and when that current stacks up against a sunset high stand — which is exactly what's setting up this weekend — you get predator fish sliding into the seams to feed on whatever the tide is sweeping past them. This is the first real PM flood-sunset window we've had since the June full moon, and it's worth planning your evening around. Stronger current also means baitfish get disoriented in the eddies below the bridge and around Fort Trumbull's rock pile, and that's where I'd be looking first.

Stripers have been the most consistent story in the river. We're seeing fish from schoolie-size up to mid-20-inch keepers holding in the current seam on the downriver side of the Gold Star Bridge, particularly on the outgoing tide when the water funnels between the center pilings. Guys drifting live eels through there in the last two hours of the ebb have been doing well after dark — fish the seam right where the fast water meets the slower water along the pilings, not out in the main channel. During daylight, bucktails in white or chartreuse, 1 to 1.5 ounces, bounced along bottom in 18 to 25 feet on the drift through the bridge span have been picking up fish, though you have to work for it — this isn't an every-cast bite, more like three or four solid takes an hour when the tide's really moving.

Fort Trumbull continues to be the better daytime spot for bigger stripers. The rip that forms off the point on the back half of the outgoing tide is holding fish in the 8 to 15 foot depth range, and bunker chunks fished on a fish-finder rig with just enough weight to hold bottom in the current have out-produced everything else there. If you can time your trip to hit that rip about two hours before the Saturday-Monday sunset high stands, that's your best shot — the current's still moving enough to hold bait in the seam, but the light's dropping and the bigger fish start showing themselves.

Bluefish have been more of a morning story, and a scattered one. Small to medium blues, mostly in the 3 to 5 pound range, have been blitzing bunker pods off Ocean Beach and Pleasure Beach right at first light, sometimes lasting only twenty or thirty minutes before they push back out. Bunker spoons or 1-ounce poppers worked fast on the surface have connected when the blitzes show, but you need to be there when it happens — I've had mornings where the water's boiling with bait and blues for a half hour and then it's dead calm the rest of the day. Worth running the beach at dawn if you're set up for it, but don't build your whole trip around it.

Porgies have been steady and dependable, which is more than I can say for the blues. Fish in the 9 to 12 inch range, some pushing 13, are stacked up around the Gold Star Bridge pilings and out along New London Ledge on the bottom. Sandworms and clam on a simple high-low rig, fished in 20 to 35 feet on the last of the incoming or the first two hours of the outgoing, has been the ticket. This is the kind of fishing you can count on right now even when everything else is spotty — bring a few dozen worms and you'll put fish in the cooler.

Blackfish are out of the picture for now — Connecticut's summer closure has us on hold until the fall season opens, so nothing to report there, and I wouldn't waste bait targeting them inshore this month anyway.

Looking ahead, the alignment I'm watching hardest is that Saturday-through-Monday sunset high stand riding on top of the building new-moon springs. If the wind stays out of the southwest and lays down in the evenings like it has been, I'd put my money on the Fort Trumbull rip and the downriver Gold Star seam for the best striper action of the week, right through that two-hour window before and after sunset. Bring bunker chunks and a couple of rigged eels, and don't be afraid to sit on the rip through a full tide change — the fish have been coming through in waves, not steady, so patience is paying off more than run-and-gun right now. If the striper bite is quiet when you get there, the porgy grounds at the bridge are the fallback that's produced every week this month.