Striped Bass Flood the Race as CT Porgy Bite Stays Hot

What's biting

What's next

With fresh striped bass pushing into the Race and topwater action already peaking per J&B Tackle, the next few days should keep favoring anglers who time trips around tide changes. J&B Tackle's report of the season's best topwater bite on the Wednesday-Thursday push, combined with success jigging, trolling, and casting during different tide phases, suggests the bite is tide-driven rather than a one-off — worth planning trips around moving water at the Race through the weekend.

Tartan II's note that afternoon bass trips have been particularly strong lines up with the fresh push J&B Tackle described, and points to sustained action into early next week if the bass hold in the area rather than continuing their migration through the Sound.

On the bottom, the porgy bite driving bait sales at AW Marina — concentrated at Fort Trumbull Pier and Avery Point, with Pleasure Beach and other rocky outcrops also producing — should hold steady; scup fishing typically stays consistent through mid-summer once it locks in like this. Black Hawk's report of an easy boat limit of jumbo porgies with black sea bass and even a puffer fish in the mix suggests species diversity on structure will keep increasing as water temperatures continue their seasonal climb. Anglers fishing bottom rigs with sandworms, squid, and clams should expect the black sea bass presence to keep building through late July as those fish move onto deeper structure.

Fluke is the one soft spot worth watching — Black Hawk's fluke trip fell short of expectations this week, which could mean fish are still transitioning or holding deeper as water warms. If that pattern continues into the weekend, anglers chasing flatfish may want to work deeper structure or adjust drift speed rather than fishing the same shallow spots that produced earlier in the season.

No fresh NOAA buoy or USGS gauge readings came through for this cycle, so treat water temperature and current sea state as unconfirmed — check a local forecast or marina report before heading out, especially for anyone running across open Sound water. With the waxing crescent moon this week, expect moderate tidal swings rather than the bigger pushes tied to full or new moon phases, which typically favors steady, predictable bite windows over dramatic feeding blitzes.

Context

Mid-July striped bass activity concentrating around the Race and other current-driven structure is typical for Long Island Sound as fish settle into their oceanfront summer holding pattern, moving out of warming back bays toward deeper, well-oxygenated water with strong tidal flow — J&B Tackle's report of stripers arriving in the Race this week and Tartan II's boat-limit slot fish reports both track that seasonal shift right on schedule. The porgy and scup bite AW Marina describes at Fort Trumbull Pier and Avery Point is likewise a classic mid-summer Connecticut shore pattern, and the black sea bass now mixing into Black Hawk's bottom trips is the expected next step as those fish move onto structure through late July and into August.

No NOAA buoy or USGS gauge data came through for this report cycle, so there's no direct water-temperature or wave-height comparison against seasonal norms to offer here — that's a genuine data gap rather than a normal reading, and water temp should be treated as unconfirmed until fresh telemetry is available.

None of this week's angler-intel sources flagged the season as running notably early, late, or off-pattern versus past years; the reports read as a fairly standard mid-July Long Island Sound stretch, with striper location shifting predictably as surface water warms and bottom species filling the gap for anglers fishing structure over the open-water blitzes more typical of spring and fall runs.