Fall Run Builds in Raritan Bay as Stripers and Blues Turn On

What's biting

What's next

With Sandy Hook water still holding at 63°F, expect the black sea bass and striped bass bite to keep strengthening over the next few days as nights cool further. Low tide falls near 3:58 AM with the next high building through 9:58 AM local time, timing worth building an early session around for sea bass drifts and any bass working bait near the inlet.

Fluke season is closing out on this stretch of coast. Capt Ron's called Friday's trip possibly 'the last day of Fluke fishing for 2026' with rough weather on the way, so anglers with a short window left on flatties should plan around calmer tide stages rather than push through a hard current change.

If the pattern OTW Northern New Jersey described on the 24th holds, bluefish and false albacore should keep thinning out over the next week or two while striped bass activity keeps building into October, fitting the current Waning Gibbous moon phase pushing bait and predators together on stronger tide swings. Grumpys Tackle's fall-run bucktail promotion is timed for exactly this window.

Context

Late September in Raritan Bay and Sandy Hook sits at the hinge between summer and fall fisheries. Flatfish action typically tapers through this window as cooling water pushes fluke into deeper channels ahead of the state's fall closure, while striped bass begin staging for the migration run that defines the region through November. Bluefish and false albacore, both warm-water migrants working the same bait schools, are on schedule to fade over the coming weeks even as reports still place them in the mix. None of this reads as early or late for the calendar. It's the ordinary fall handoff repeating on the usual timeline, with the bass push typically building through October rather than arriving all at once.