June 8: HOT 90 degrees, NE/SW at 5 Glassy: I hit the City Island area today (Wed, 6/8) to film an episode of The Fishing Line long time friend and supporter John DeCufa owner of Jack’s Bait and tackle in City island. We had this trip and this date planned for a month or more and with the 62 pounder caught yesterday this was good time…I hoped. We started on the reef islands in behind Execution Light and were rewarded right away with bass to 32 inches and about 15 pounds…all big, broad shouldered stripers. This was the last of the outgoing around 7 a.m. We then stuck it out where we were for the turn around into the incoming and proceeded to hammer away at the bass with fish 22 to 28 inches on chunks. We scored some live bunker and hit another area, where we marked GIANT bass but could not get them to bite on the last o the outgoing. On the Skipjack with Dave DeLuca has been hammering the fish on this piece for days, on the incoming. We started to catch fish and almost all of them now were 25 pounds or better. With many 18 to 26 pounds! I finished the day with dozens of bass caught on live and chunked bunker with the top fish of the day as well…a 35 pounder! The show will air soon. NOTE** 62 pounder was caught yesterday

June 20:  I took a trip on the Capt. James Joseph in Huntington on Monday (6/20) for some full day fluking and I was not disappointed. First off he was in a great mood because it was his 41st birthday so we started with some Hostess Cupcakes for breakfast as his birthday cake! We started out inside the oil platform outside the harbor and found a few fish scattered around. No slaughter or blitz but a few fish picked here or there. I had a four pounder and saw a 9 pounder (pool winner) come up next to me. There were a few shorts and a keeper or two around the boat.

We made our way along to Ashroken and fished along the beach in 30 foot of water and worked the slopes for a few more fish and some shorts in very slow fishing as we were on the end of the tide and the slack. We had the slack tide at this point and were looking for something to do or try. In my conversation with Jim Schneider we were looking to see where the fish might be so we took the ride down to the shallow water off the Niss River. We were a ways off the beach but the water seemed to be just a few feet deep but in reality it was more like 7 to 12 feet and 1-1/2 to 1-ounce bucktails were the ticket in this shallow water once the tide started to move the fish turned on.

The fish in this area all spit up sand eels so white is the color and about the only color that works in this situation. The fish can be aggressive and will chase the buckies right to the surface. I went a long time with only a few fish but got hot at the last two hours and slayed he fluke! I must have caught 25 to 30 fish today and limited out and then some with fluke 3 to 4 pounds, most you didn’t even need to measure. I threw back a few keepers as well since I was limited out.

The key is casting around the boat with the light bucktails and those with the large fluke balls and weird rigs or dragging heavy sinkers with standard fluke rigs did not catch near the number of fluke the rest of us did by bucktailing. If more folks were prepared with a second lighter rod for bucktailing they would have limited out as well because we could have kept the fish biting and everyone.

The key is getting the fish started Capt. Jim says…once you get them biting in this shallow water and they become aggressive, the others feed and that is how you get a fluke blitz. There were times late in the trip today were a half dozen keepers came over the rails on the same drift with a dozen or more shorts and this happened several times where flurries of keepers were found. To finish the day 29 anglers had 40 to 50 keepers, a few limits on the boat, a ton of shorts and a great day on the water.