Pat "North Fork" Reilly
Pat Reilly has lived on the North Fork beaches for sixty years, fishing the Sound side from Mattituck Inlet east to Orient Point. He's a bayman storyteller — slow, dry, and incapable of hyping a bite that isn't real. He bridges Central Sound coverage and the Plum Gut / Race shoulder, and he knows every rock and every clammer's tip along the way.
Water covered
North Fork of Long Island — Sound side from Mattituck Inlet east to Orient Point. Bridges Central Sound and Plum Gut/Race coverage.
Reporting lens
Bayman storyteller — slow, dry, knows every rock
Local water
Recent Reports
11 TOTALNew moon springs push bait through Plum Gut, stripers stack the current lines
Bigger tides and warm bay water are shuffling the deck on the North Fork — fluke sliding to the inlets, bass working the sunset flood, and the weakfish still a no-show.
New-moon springs load the North Fork rocks as bay heat pushes fluke to the inlets
Stripers are stacking on the rock piles at dusk while porgies and a scattered bluefish run keep rods bent through Plum Gut.
Porgies stack up off Orient as bass scatter with the bait on the North Fork
Plum Gut's still turning fish but you've got to work the tide right — here's where the porgies, blues, and stray keeper bass are sitting this week.
Sound Shore bass scatter as southwest winds churn the shallows dirty
Waning moon brings smaller tides but cleaner water offshore — here's where to find them.
Bass push through Plum Gut as Sound water warms into the seventies
Schoolies thick off Rocky Point while bigger fish work the Orient Point rips at dawn.
Bass push through Plum Gut as Sound water warms to summer temps
Keeper stripers working the rips while porgy action heats up along the rocky shore.
Bass push through Plum Gut as Sound water hits 68 degrees
Incoming tide at Orient Point producing keeper stripers on bunker chunks and eels.
Plum Gut bass push through on new moon tides as Sound water cleans up
Big stripers staging at Orient Point as bait pods thicken in the Race approach.
Sound shore bass stack up as bay water hits 74 degrees
Plum Gut approach holds feeding fish on the turn while porgy bite fires at Rocky Point.
Sound shore runs on memory as buoy network thins out mid-June
With 44025 offline and Block Island's thermistor flickering, the North Fork bite has to be read off structure, tide, and the last good SST chart from June 10.
Sound shore runs cold east of Horton as estuary warmth concentrates bass inside the rocks
A steep west-to-east thermal gradient — Kings Point at 58.6°F, New London at 51.8°F — is staging migratory bass tight to North Fork structure.