Well, tomorrow will be October 1st, unfortunately this will be the first September since having my boat that I will not have an albie caught in this month. Their late partial arrival, and bad weather has made it difficult to track them down, let alone get anywhere near them to make a cast.
In my defense I do not know anyone that has actually caught an albie locally (with pics to prove it).
I have high hopes for October. I will be doing a lot of fishing all weekend long.
Will report back soon.
HARDTAILS HAVE BEEN SPOTTED (not by me) 2 days ago, about 10-15 miles East of here. I have had multiple people tell me the exact same thing, so I believe them. I have not been able to see it for myself because I was not in the location that they showed up. Hopefully they will be coming this way.
Here it is September 25th, still no confirmed catches of albies or bonito by myself or close fishing friends. Only the local tackle shop is saying there are "reports of scattered/random schools of albies" reported near Stratford, and Norwalk.
I knew of 3 guys, that all went fishing yesterday, they did not see a single hard tail. They did however catch; blues, stripers, porgies, sea bass and saw a pod of dolphins near smithtown bay.
Fished yesterday afternoon. Not a SINGLE SPLASH WAS SEEN. Jigged up a ton of small sea bass and porgies any where we stopped.
A lot of fisherman were hoping after this hard blow we had for the last week, that it would be the perfect time for the hard tails to slide in to our area. This just has not happened yet.
I am slightly concerned that the albies just may not show this year, because there are no reports (that I know of coming from RI and MTK) any more. A week or 2 ago there were a lot of reports from the area, now there are guys saying there are no albies to speak of. Some guys are saying that the water is just too churned up right now because of the heavy wind and heavy surf. They are hopeful that once it settles down, the albies will show up in full force.
If the eastern areas like eastern CT, RI, MTK are not seeing any albies, then we (western long island sound) will likely not see any either, since their migration starts from the east where the atlantic ocean means long island sound, then they move further west.
Still hopeful...
If its going to happen it will be literally any day now...today? tomorrow?
This is always a tense time for me...
Once September hits, I am tirelessly watching for the arrival of hard tails here in western long island sound. Last year we had a strong bonito run for the first time since I have been fishing these waters by September 15th. This year, nothing. Usually this is the week the albies show up, if they are going to. Since I have been fishing these waters, the albies have shown up every year, however prior to about 6/7 years ago they were somewhat rare.
We have a lot of baitfish, the nights are getting cooler. There have been a lot of strong winds from the east caused by a hurricane offshore which typically pushes the fish into the sound, and there is a new moon this week. So I am hopeful that the pattern will repeat itself and we will have a strong push of fish this week. The seas will finally subside by weds, after almost a week long blow which has made is difficult for most to scout the area. Ideally the fish will be there once we all get a chance to get back on the water.
Last year was the weakest run I have seen of albies in western long island sound. They stayed near long island and almost an hour boat ride away for the majority of the fall, which made finding them difficult.
FINGERS CROSSED...
Welp, its been a while. I have been pretty busy with home renovations, remote teaching, and I have not dedicated the time to keep up with reports...
RECAP:
Spring Run for Striped bass in June and July was sub par in my opinion. I did notice that the normal evening bite, where the bass blow up on bunker schools was non existent for me, and for those that were able to cash in on it during the right week, it was sporadic. Once I figured out the best success rate was in the morning this year, I began getting on fish. I had a few days of 20-53#s hitting the deck. BUT it was literally just a few days. The action was EXTREMELY localized to a 1 mile radius.
There was a definite lack of big blues this summer. There was an occasional small bluefish caught here and there up to 5lbs at best.
Fall run is starting to heat up. There have been blitzes of small bass, and blues as well as an unusual visitor; the Spanish mackerel.
At the time of writing this report (Sept 17th) there have not been any confirmed catch of Atlantic Bonito in Western Long Island Sound thus far. There have been some sporadic reports that people have seen them jumping out of the water, however I think it is possible that it is a case of mistaken identity and the reports are actually Spanish mackerel, which are sometimes mistaken for bonito.