The Season- A Rundown 2023

[fishtilldeath]

1 hour ago, Deserteagle778 said:

Been working hard this weekend to find the fish. Hit a bunch of quality fish. Was a super fun outing. Has anyone ever ran into a ghost? It was the scariest **** I've ever experienced. I've been hitting this spot for 2 years now. Last year everytime i past a certain point in my walk i'd hear a noise. This night i heard a noise then i saw a dark silhouette, the shadow or spirit was sitting and got up when I was in 10 ft of it. I turned my light on and it was gone. Very scary but still trying to make sense of the entire situation. May not go back to this spot ... it's obviously haunted.

Hey Eagle PM the location to me I’ll go check on the ghost for ya… ahaha nice fish!

[LowEnd]

2 hours ago, Deserteagle778 said:

Been working hard this weekend to find the fish. Hit a bunch of quality fish. Was a super fun outing. Has anyone ever ran into a ghost? It was the scariest **** I've ever experienced. I've been hitting this spot for 2 years now. Last year everytime i past a certain point in my walk i'd hear a noise. This night i heard a noise then i saw a dark silhouette, the shadow or spirit was sitting and got up when I was in 10 ft of it. I turned my light on and it was gone. Very scary but still trying to make sense of the entire situation. May not go back to this spot ... it's obviously haunted.

Great job,

When there’s something strange in your neighborhood, who ya gonna call?

[LowEnd]

Went to a local inlet yesterday at high tide. This place in the past has been good during the summer to sight cast to bass. Only saw one and it took off before I had a chance to cast to it. No signs of life, bait birds 0.! Skunked.

 

Hit a back bay spot this morning in the dark. 1st cast fish on!  Landed 24 bass of which 3 were slots. Had a couple of micro’s which was nice to see some juvenile fish. The rest were 20” to 27” all on 1/2 oz. bucktail

 

[LowEnd]

Tried to duplicate but no deal this morning. BT got me 2 fish in the dark. Switched to a bomber got another bass.

Put on a popper at false dawn and got 6 more. No slots, all 20” to 27”. Weed was a issue as well.

[pakalolo]

Damn good fluke bite today limit to 5 lbs with a true beast dropped. 105’ fluke belly strips 

[fishguy62]

48 mins ago, pakalolo said:

Damn good fluke bite today limit to 5 lbs with a true beast dropped. 105’ fluke belly strips 

From the surf?

[pakalolo]

6 miles off. Waaay east 

[LowEnd]

This place went really quite. I haven’t been out b/c of work in over a week.

Somebody has to be catching something out there.

What about Blues? This is usually a good time for some gators and tailor blues.

[Antek]

Been mostly out of commission with work stuff, but got out for a couple of brief forays here in the WLIS in the last week. Totally dead for me, as it has been much of this year. With the high temps and winds the water is the color and opacity of greenish chocolate milk now, so I don’t blame the fish for not wanting to hang out in that. I’m going to be hanging the striper tackle up until fall and start targeting porgies on light tackle soon. Not seeing any bunker pods, whereas usually the bay is full of them at this time. Don’t know if our unusually warm winter set the stage for this, or what, but it remains a terrible year thus far. 

[CWitek]

15 hours ago, LowEnd said:

This place went really quite. I haven’t been out b/c of work in over a week.

Somebody has to be catching something out there.

What about Blues? This is usually a good time for some gators and tailor blues.

The interesting thing about bluefish is that, for a 10-day stretch, I had tiny--maybe 10-12 inch--bluefish in my chum slick in 120 feet south of Fire Island.  Last Friday, they were in the slick all day, from 8:30 jto 3:30 (although they weren;t around yesterday).

 

I've fished shark off Long Island for 40 years, and this is the first time I've ever had blues that small in my slick.  Have no idea why they were there..  On the plus side, these are the first bluefish that I've had in my slick since 2017 (so much for the claims that "the bluefish have all moved offshore:), even in places where they used to make it impossible to put out baits on many occasions, so maybe we'll see the population rebound.

[Richizzzle]

Fishing way out east for blues is still good.

 

PSA please if you are wading, walk back to land on the retrieve (if possible) and unhook, or be on a high enough rock. Sharks everywhere, large sandbar came right up to me in 2-3 feet of water.

 

Last thing you wanna do is be unhooking a bluefish and lose a hand.

[LowEnd]

Charles, that is interesting.

First off those snappers shouldn’t be around here for another 3 weeks or so.

Seconded, the bay blues to 26” have been absent inshore.

Third, the schoolie bass are also MIA.

This tells me there is a significant amount of bait off shore and the fish do not need to come onshore to feed. Just my opinion but this has been an off season so far on most levels.

[CWitek]

21 hours ago, LowEnd said:

Charles, that is interesting.

First off those snappers shouldn’t be around here for another 3 weeks or so.

Seconded, the bay blues to 26” have been absent inshore.

Third, the schoolie bass are also MIA.

This tells me there is a significant amount of bait off shore and the fish do not need to come onshore to feed. Just my opinion but this has been an off season so far on most levels.

But the bigger blues--the ones you describe as "to 26"--aren't offshore.  The only blues Ive seen out there are the little ones.  The "racers" we used to get in our slicks in June/early July haven't shown up.

 

And the schoolie bass--at least those under 24 inches or so--were never spawned.  2019-2022 was the lowest 4-year average of the Maryland juvenile abundance index ever recorded in the 65-year history of the Maryland survey,  They're not offshore, but rather don't exist.  If we don't et lucky and have a better Maryland spawn this year--and so far, I'm hearing rumors of both good and bad--there is going to be a very large hole in the age/size structure of the striped bass stock.

 

Not huge amounts of small bait offshore.  Some decent numbers of sand eels, and some squid, but no unusual quantities of bait.  My fishfinder screen is showing relatively little.

 

There is a tendency to believe that bass and blues remain offshore when they aren't being seen inshore, but as someone who spends most of his fishing time offshore, my experience is that is a false assumption.  Yes, sometimes yiou run across a school of bass or blues outside, but typically, if they're not inshore, they're not offshore either.  (An exception is the blujefish that winter at the edge of the shelf, but that is strictly a winter thing.)

[LowEnd]

Charles, thank you for the insight.

Went to my local inlet on the top of out going this morning.

Only got one 22” blue fish, pathetic!

There should be dozens of these things now with a gator or two mixed in.

[Jig It]

Fished a north shore yesterday with dedicated fluke setup. Pulled 7 sea robins, and one tiny fluke. Compared to last year, been pretty bad for fluke.