We have been mixing it up a lot the past few days. Our last East end trip saw a few hundred fluke but keepers were hard to come by. Looks like the water warmed up enough this past week that the fluke are finally moving on. But whatever happens….that was one AMAZING run of fluke. Never have we seen those kind of numbers and size of fluke in Long Island Sound as we did this year.
This year we had more 9 lb fluke than all our other seasons combined. We had many over 8 and dozens over 7 lbs this year. The largest was 10.5 lbs. By far our best BIG fish year to date. Not to mention, never have we caught literally HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of 18 inch plus fluke like we have seen in the past 3 weeks. I never recall fluking in which anglers have put over 100 fluke per person in the boat. We had many trips in which a 10-15 anglers put 200-300 fluke 18 inches or better in the boat! Truly awesome fluking and a season I will not soon forget!
Thankfully the porgies have started to settle in off the local rockpiles and on some of our deep water drops and wrecks. This morning we put about 90 jumbo scup in the boat. We then switched over to fluke and had a lot of short action but again, tough to find keepers. The mid trip was slow as we had to move inshore with the lousy weather. We ended up with a few blues and a few porgies.
The jigging has also had its moments. Last night we had about 200 blues on the evening trip. We will continue to mix it up depending on the tides and conditions. Now is the time the Middle Grounds starts heating up and we will definitely be headed out there on a regular basis.