Fishing Report: 6-Jun-10

It's been a quiet week around here, as we seem to be about to transition into summer fishing mode a few weeks earlier than usual. We had three trips this week, splitting our time pretty evenly between bay and ocean as well as between fluke and stripers.

On the bay side of things, all this warm weather we've had over the past few weeks has raised the water temps well up into the 70's. That in turn has brought our back bay striper fishing pretty much to a standstill, but should also trigger the start of some pretty decent bay fluke fishing for the next couple of months. We currently have to contend with our annual infestation of slimeweed, but that should clear up shortly and fluking will shift into high gear. Bluefish are also continuing to provide some pretty reliable topwater action around the inlet on poppers most days.

On the ocean side, the water is in the mid-to-upper 50's. There's also still plenty of bunker along the beach despite the best efforts of netters with spotter planes trying to wipe them out. What we didn't see this week was the anticipated return of the hot striper fishing we've had most of this year. There were a few caught so they're not completely gone, but it wasn't the kind of fishing you'd expect with seemingly perfect conditions. Personally, I don't think it's over so we'll continue striper fishing for the next couple of weeks when the opportunity arises. We did take a shot at fluke on the ocean side on yesterday's trip, but only found a few shorts willing to chew at our baits. I recorded surface temps ranging from 52 to 58 degrees out there and our sinkers were like ice cubes when they came up from the bottom. That water is still pretty cold, so it may be a couple weeks more before that flatties outside turn on.