Fishing Report as of 5/27/2021
If its not the weather…its the fish! We have been battling the weather for the past week as the wind and mother nature just won’t give boaters a fighting chance around Fire Island.
The wind has been blowing day after day. The sea conditions have been challenging to say the least and the bay and its brown tide and slip gut isn’t encouraging fishing. But with that all said and done, there are still fish in these waters!
Right now the best bite are Blues and Weakfish, but it’s not getting easier. The Blue bite is hot and cold and you have to be at the right place, at the right time when they decide to feed. This means you have to put in the time. If you think you are going to go to your favorite spot, drop and cast and get on the action you may be in for a surprise. We found that what worked one day, didn’t work the next day. The hot spot on Monday was cold on Tuesday. This means you have to be prepared with a host of areas and baits. My advice, do whatever you can to get LIVE BAIT. Years ago you can buy live killies. If you know someone who sells them or if you can trap them, START THERE. Get live bait in the water. The peanuts don’t show up until August, so between now and then you’ll need to do whatever you can to get something alive in that baitwell. If that doesn’t work, then you are going to have to keep changing your arsenal until something works. For instance, we were using spearing and fresh shrimp and the fish only showed a mild interest in this. Gulp, there was no appetite for it at all. White grubs, red teasers seem to pick up the action a bit. I’m thinking that bright red may be more visible in the current water conditions than other baits/colors, so make sure you have that when you go out.
Just yesterday we were throwing everything at them with only mild interest. I then put on a white plastic shrimp with a chartreuse tail and within seconds of it hitting the water FISH ON! It was a nice size blue. Then we dropped it in again, BINGO… Weakfish. We played with this artificial for a bit more and it had some success but not lights out.
I was able to trap 1 Killie. Yes, 1. We dropped that down and within a nano-second we hooked into a 4′ dogfish in the bay! My focus this week is to trap LIVE BAIT.
When the fish are under stress by boat traffic, head boats, bad water conditions, there is no magic potion. You need to think outside of the box. Look for shoals and clean water. This means you may need to run to the various cuts the bay provides. This means you may need to run to the inlet, or take a shot near the bridge. You will be putting hours on the motors but sometimes this is what you need to do when conditions aren’t ideal.
I won’t be fishing Memorial Day weekend. My next Charter will be on Tuesday or Wednesday. Again, we don’t have an ideal weather week ahead, but those fish have to eat, and besides, its better than doing yardwork!