NYBightFluke, Spring ‘Em On!
The snow hasmelted,the boats in the water andtheres a nice weather window, and your wife says “get out and go already!” For us Fishermen that means its game on! With most of us getting our boats in the water later than we care to with the harsher winters and with winter flounder fishing not really worth the effort, this scenario usually takes place in early or mid May. Where is your first trip going to be? For many in the know it’s an area which is the most undervaluedfishing area on all Long island……… the NY BIGHT! Encompassing from Debs inlet to Rockaway Inlet & back across to the shores of Sandy Hook NJ and Staten Island, the bightoffers some of the best early season fluking around! You can expect a good showing of keeper sized fishand steady action making for a great day at the rod, all within a 15 minute run from either inlet or any of the areas bays like Raritan Sandy Hook, or NY Harbor.
We start off the season much like fisherman in other areas do, trying to intercept the fish migrating inshore through our inlet channels. In short this normally translates into starting your season fishing off the head buoy areas of DebsRockaway inlet and s/e of the RI buoy on the flats inshore of Ambrose channel. Some of these fish will undoubtedly stay outside the inlets on channel edges and off of area structure, but most will make it into the bays. From trip to trip you will find yourself following the migration inshore. Once the fish are in the bay they will fan out more and establish themselves in productive feeding areas looking for shrimp and other baits native to the bays.
Early run fluke seem to prefer the real bait,munching on squid or fluke belly Spearing combos. Remember when using belly to substitute the squid with, just keep the rack to show any DEC agents that might want to take a look. Rig up with your true blue single hook size 4/0 wide gap with a nice nylon squid skirt (a variety of colors will work ) and your good to go. Keep that hook up about 6-8 inches, unless there is a fast drift then move up the hook to 14 inches above the sinker. No still drifting for these first arriving fluke either. Make your time count, employ a moderate speed, smooth lifts of the rod, don’t just wildly let the rigslam back to the bottom, control it the whole way down to limit any tanglingwhile letting you feel what’s going on at the end of your line. Many times these spring fluke will do the old grab it on the way down, and swim along with it thing. When you find this happening, aproductive technique is to drop back once you feel extra weight on the end of your line. I like to take 6 pulls of line off from the spool to the first guide on the rod. This tends to give the fish just enough time to eat his way up to the business end of the wide gap. Once that slack comes tight if the weight is still felt, a quick snap of the wrist will usually jaw hook the fluke. Fishing with Braid has become more than the most productive way to fluke, it’s become the onlyway to fish for most anglers.
This years season is likely to open Mid May and you should be able to find fish in the bays already, not far from your marina or launch ramp in anywhere from 6-30ft .This is when fluking becomes realfun, It has then becomebucktail time! I like to go with an assortment of 1.5oz to 3 oz spros or similar head bucktail jigs in chartreuse,green and white, or spearing blue. On occasion the Pink colors come through if small squid are around or shrimp are very plentiful. IF you like to have custom bucktail jigs done up you can go up to 6 oz if you keep the hook size appropriate to most of the fish you will be coming across. (You can always hook a large fish on a smaller hook, so don’t worry if your jig has a hook 2 sizes smaller than what is on a similar weighted production jig.) Try to not use a jig with a 6/0 hook that you would use for bluefish. I tie a dropper loop up around 14 inches from my bucktail jig. Here I will put a size 3/0 octopus mustad ultra point hook and a nice swimming mullet gulp in 4 inch size , white or Chartreuse . IF you prefer to not go the gulp route, you can add a nice riveted bucktail teaser to the dropper loop and sweeten the hook with either a small strip bait, or fish bait like a sand eel or spearing. Don’t use long strip bait as it will fold back over the hook point as your bouncing your rig along the bottom. There are other good options like a small b52 squid, or nylon squid skirt up on the dropper loop, baited the same way. The action you impart on the artificial or how fast you work it is subjective to lots of things, speed of drift over ground, water clarity and temperature, and whether or not the fish are on or off the feed due to previous or expected fronts coming through. You will want to keep your line as straight up and down as possible as you drift along. You will not need to use a really quick bounce if you’re drifting along fast due to current or wind speed. (Don’t forget to bring along that trusty drift sock to help remedy this condition) Your GPS comes in handy in this area as if I see a drift over 1.3 knots or under 1kt, I start to consider the drift sock or bumping my engine in and out of gear in the direction of the current flow should I not be having success. IF you are not moving fast enough, due to lack of wind or slack tide, you may want to work your rig quickly to catch the attention of a fluke and p/o him enough to strike in an aggressive territorial matter. Appeal to that territorial instinct and your catches will definitely improve, particularly if you’re fishing a bottom structure other than flats. Big fluke will lay and wait to ambush that unsuspecting prey, if you make them mad, they’ll get up the energy to pounce on your offering whether they want a meal or not.
In a lot of cases you will have to vary your speed of bounce and change up your colorselections if the water clarity changes or thepre-dominate forage fish in the area changes. In dirty water,the fluke aren’t as likely to be able to get a clear enough visual should you impart very fast bounce. The fish need to be able to see your selection, but remember if it looks too bright or moves too fast compared to what’s down there, you won’t sniff a bite. Fish aren’t stupid so we can’t be either! These things are trial and error but once you find what works, it may be your go to technique for quite some time. One year we hada lot of spots in the bay, larger profile artificial in chartreuse would be the way you wanted to rig. The spot are a medium speed swimmers so once speed of bounce was figured out our success rate went way up. The following year though, it was sand eels everywhere and things were changed up again. You get the point. You will see different approaches and colors work in late season as different bait fish enter the area and the fish are staging to move out. That’s an article for another time!
I like water temperatures early in the year to be 58degrees or above, that doesn’t mean you can’t find fish in colder water, just my preference when starting my fluke season. If I see that my bay areas are colder on the surface than prefered. I’ll head into the shallow areas on an ebbing tide and try to find a warmer pocket of water. Hopefully I’ll read bait and consequently find fluke feeding on them. If it is incoming tide, I’ll try to fish deeperwater, starting at 30ft.,and look for bait and structure that will hold the fish. Deep water early in the year can actually have a better bottom temperature than the shallow water if it is still cold at night or ocean temperatures push water in that is unusually colder than normal for the time of year. This year may be that kind of year with lots of snow runoff from the shores of the Hudsonriverwashing into the bight. This will drop the spring time ocean temperatures considerably and could greatly influence our early season Fluking.
Later on in Mid June I prefer to find 68 degree water temperatures to work, and depths of 25ft -45 ft. , which in our area has some nice bottom for holding fluke, and usually there is enough bait to keep fish put. This is the time of year I’ll work from the west side of Jamaica bay out to the tin can and the flats of Ambrose off the red side. If there is nothing doing out in those depth ranges, ill hit the Coney Island flats and channel. The flats area is really productive for working a buck tail for fluke , but locating a body of fish on this large section of the East Bank can be time consuming if you don’t hit it right on the first areas tried. Fish also tend to be on the smaller side when they summer on the flats. Most of them range from 12-16 inches, with an occasional keeper, which should improve some this season with the regulations heading towards 4 fish at 18 inches.
An aspect of fluking which many anglers don’t like to deal with is keeping a good data log. With computers so much a part of our lives, a good log can be created using excel software, or you can purchase a software program if you like. Create wide enough columns so you can fit the information you need in each category. I like to keep a record of water temperature, amount of fish caught & kept, and by catch, as well as wind conditions and tide, and oh yea, the moon phase! I then type into the notes section (which has the largest column width of my log) , details of Importance. Things like what stage of the tide did the fish become aggressive, or picky. Ill mention what speed I had to bucktail at, colors used and their success. When I bait fish I’ll make note of which bait was best on the drift, and if I had to work the bait with more lifts,. IfI had to resort to dead sticking a line to catch (Sometimes the only way to catch!) That would be in the notes too! Reading through your logs often will help ensure that you don’t neglect to try something that has been working in a particular area. You also don’t want to miss trying an area that for some reason holds fish during the current time of year. Some spots are only good on certain stages of the tide, you best be writing that down also! From year to year the bite could be on different stages of the tides,but some spots never change regardless of the general area trends. The only way to truly learn your area and find those “times of tide” spots is by keeping a good log! Fluking can be a lazy mans’ sport, or if you want to be good at it, itcan be a hard workers challenge. Figure out the intangibles and you’ll definitely be ahead of the game!
Coney Island’s Famous Parachute jump signifys your in Prime buck tailing area!
Written by Michael Bobetsky
Photos by Michael Bobetsky
Nice Fluke like these are quite common through out the Bight.
This one made a 54 qt cooler look small (notice the white Gulp 4” swimming mullet still in its mouth)
Stay alert traveling across ambrose to get on the flats outside the channel. Cruise ships and tankers are always traversing into NY harbor.