Hints Of Strong Striper Surf Season

The fall 2016 season has already seen more sustained blitzes of striped bass along the beaches and in Montauk in a few weeks than the sum total in each of the last two or three years.The schoolie bass, mostly in the 20-to-26-inch range, boiled up in big numbers along both the south and north sides of Montauk Point on several days last week. There hasn’t been the kind of sustained blitzes for days at a stretch that we used to see, but for surf fishermen and fly casters the fishing has been a welcome reminder of the type of fishing we all had become accustomed to during the striped bass rebound and zenith of the late 1990s and early 21st century.

Beyond the daytime spectacle of the blitzes, the night surf has been lively, too, with a somewhat larger average size, for those looking for a keeper or two. The jetties of Shinnecock Inlet and Montauk’s southern rocks are the best bet.

The schools of false albacore that had been slaughtering the clouds of bay anchovies prior to the onslaught of stripers continue to pop up around the bass schools and intermittently throughout the Gardiners Bay-Block Island Sound system but have been a bit more scattered and ephemeral than they had been.

The fluke season went out with a bit of a flurry thanks to a few calm days at the end of the week. The early closure this year left some of the best fishing of the season in the wake of boats heading for the barn.

Meat hunters are now left to the porgies, sea bass and cod grounds to fill coolers. Porgies should still be an easy way to put a big bag of fillets on ice for another few weeks. Sea bass limits will be eight fish per man through next weekend and then 10 fish per man until the end of December. Cod fishing has been decent at Coxes and Cartwright and some of the inshore wrecks.

The offshore scene has been quieted by rough seas and scattered fish. Some big groups of longfin are roaming the eastern canyons, and a bigeye or two may be mixed in with them, but the fleet has not found the main body of yellowfins and bigeyes since Hermine stirred the pot.

East winds are on tap for the rest of this week, which should only throw gasoline on the fire for surf fishermen.

Catch ’em up, folks. See you out there.