Bottom Bite Rolls On in CT's LI Sound as Albies Push Toward Watch Hill

What's next

With water still parked in the low-to-mid 70s (73°F at buoy 44025, 74°F at buoy 44065) and light-to-moderate winds near 6 m/s out of the 44065 reading, conditions over the next 2-3 days should stay comfortable for both boat and shore trips, with seas holding near the 1.6-foot range logged at 44025. That's the kind of window CT captains have been using to grind the bottom grounds, and Tartan II's report suggests scup and sea bass should keep producing at a similar clip as long as temperatures don't drop sharply.

The bigger storyline to watch is the false albacore push J&B Tackle is already seeing move into the Watch Hill corridor. Early morning has been the most productive window there, with tons of bait reported moving along the shoreline — a pattern that typically tightens up as water temps ease through September, so anglers working the CT side of that border zone should expect the window to keep improving over the next week rather than fading. J&B Tackle's early bite and Watch Hill birds are worth watching closely on calm mornings.

Bluefish should stay a reliable option in the near term. Tartan II's steady bottom action and the gator blues flagged in The Fisherman's New England forecast both point to a fishery that's still actively feeding, and that tends to hold as long as bait stays thick in the Sound. Scup fishing at spots like Fort Trumbull and Avery Point should keep rewarding simple bait rigs — sandworms, squid, or clams on the bottom — per AW Marina, since porgies typically stay reliable through this stretch of September.

Fluke is the one soft spot worth planning around. Black Hawk's Thursday trip came up mostly shorts, and that's a fish that tends to slide deeper and further offshore as the month progresses, so weekend trips chasing keeper fluke may want to push toward deeper structure rather than the shallower flats that produced earlier in the season. No tide or river-gauge data came through this cycle, so plan tide timing around local charts rather than this report.

Context

September on Long Island Sound is typically a transition month — summer species like fluke start thinning out while bottom fish like scup and black sea bass often peak, and the first false albacore and bonito of the fall run begin showing along the CT/RI border. What's coming through the CT reports this week tracks that pattern closely: Tartan II's scup are described as both numerous and large, which is consistent with a normal, on-schedule September bite rather than anything early or late. The Thursday fluke trip that came up light on keepers per Black Hawk also fits the seasonal script, since fluke action typically starts winding down through the month as fish move toward deeper water ahead of their fall exit from the Sound.

The false albacore reports from J&B Tackle are worth flagging as a data point rather than a trend — this report only has one CT-adjacent source confirming albies at Watch Hill, so it reads as an early arrival rather than a full-blown push yet. Broader Northeast coverage (The Fisherman's New England forecast) frames this fall's albie run as running a bit behind the typical Cape Cod schedule, though the CT/RI border activity described by J&B Tackle suggests the western edge of that run may be tracking closer to normal. There isn't enough direct CT testimony in this cycle to say definitively whether the overall season is running ahead or behind average — the bottom-fish signals point to on-schedule, and the albie signal is too early to call one way or the other.