Fishing Report: 30-May-10

Hope everyone's enjoying this fine holiday weekend. As is our custom, we've taken this weekend off to avoid some of the boat chaos on the bay and seem to have lucked into perfect weather.

This will be a short report, since there's not too much to report this week. The large ocean swell kept us in the bay on all four trips this week, and the fishing was mostly a slow pick. We did catch a few bass, but it was mostly three to five pound bluefish that provided the action. Early morning action on small poppers was best until the increasing boat traffic would scatter the schools. I guess that means summer is here. Reports I've received from the few boats that ran the beach looking for bunker and stripers this week indicate we've still got plenty of bait around but the striped ones had at least temporarily gone into hiding through the full moon period. With that much bait still around and the water temps still perfect, it's just a matter of being out there when they turn on again.

While we normally stick with striper fishing until the late part of June, we may start splitting our time on bay trips between stripers and fluke until we know if the slow action from this week signals an early end to bay bassing this year. We'll continue to fish for striped bass along the beachfront for the next month as long as the bunker stick around.