Waiting For Fall Run To Start

Mid October and a lot of fishermen are still waiting on pins and needles for the fall run to start.

There have been flashes of life here and there, but they have been few, scattered and unreliable. A striped bass blitz off Montauk Point, a surge of stripers and blues along the sand beaches, a sudden invasion of false albacore in Shinnecock Inlet. Each time it sparks the exclamations that “it’s finally starting.” And then it ends.

Pretty much the only thing reliable about the fishing so far this fall is that it won’t be good in the same spot two days in a row.

Striped bass are here, and they are definitely beginning their migration. The spots that had been holding fish through the summer and early fall have seen big changes as fish start to move out. But where they have moved to has been difficult to determine on most days.

There were a couple blitz appearances last week near the Montauk Lighthouse, but they were short-lived. There was apparently a good night of fishing on the North Side and some scattered appearances of fish on the beaches in Bridgehampton and Southampton.

False albacore have continued to frustrate the addicted anglers who hunt them obsessively. Almost worse than there being none, they have appeared almost entirely unpredictably and then vanish not to return on the same tides in the following days. Those who have found them offshore have found them somewhat difficult to catch on artificials.

There are other options while we wait for the marquee event to start, if the stars even bother to show up.

Blackfish season opens this weekend in the waters east of Orient Point (it opened for Long Island Sound to the west of that on Monday), which brings a whole new population of obsessive anglers onto the scene.

Black sea bass, porgies and some cod and ling have been reliable cooler-fillers on the wrecks and reefs just about anywhere, so nobody should be going hungry.

Tuna fishing has continued to be good on most days — and outstanding on some days. Yellowfin tuna are still roaming the 40 fathom line south of Shinnecock and have been fairly reliable to be near the draggers working the region and eager to find chunks of butterfish, live bunker or whatever floater baits you scoop up.

It’s much too early to write off the 2021 fall run as a bust. We’ve had years that were quiet well into October before and then exploded into gangbusters. So anglers need to stay on their toes, keep testing the waters and checking spots, and filling coolers in other ways whenever they can.

Catch ’em up. See you out there.