This August of Plenty just keeps rolling along. In the last week I reported good numbers of stripers around from both shore and boat. There had been very few blues around. Well, that's all changed now as the blues have arrived in force.
I went out yesterday along the south shore in the boat with my brother Steve and my son Jon. At first we only found snapper blues close to shore but once we went out a mile to 2 miles from the mainland it was school after school of bluefish chasing vast schools of bait that caused the water to turn brown. Flocks of terns were also hitting the water. The bluefish were aggressive 4-8 lb. mid size fish, and they would readily attack just about anything that moved. The Kastmaster XL was effective as were poppers and needlefish plugs worked fast along the surface. You could catch as many blues as you wanted. Once the sun started to go low, we headed closer to shore in about 20-30 feet of water and further south to look for stripers. Once again, it was school after school of bluefish with an occasional striper in the mix. Once it got dark, we figured we would troll Daiwa SP minnows in the hopes of getting a keeper bass. We were now in 6-10 feet of water, close to the shore, and we barely would move and a blue would grab the swimmer. This continued happening well after dark. It's unusual for blues to hit a plug in the darkness, but they were doing it yesterday.One very interesting note. It was the first time I have seen bay anchovies in the area. The blues we landed were spitting them up along with small sandeels and what appeared to be baby menhaden. The bait supply is really building right now and should set up a fantastic fall along the shoreline when the cooler weather arrives. But, for now, we are really enjoying this August of Plenty, one of the best Augusts I have fished in a long time.
