Stripers Running Hot Shore-Wide While Sea Bass Season Waits for Warmer Water

What's Biting

What's Next

The most anticipated shift heading into Memorial Day weekend is a sea bass turnaround. Sitting at 55–56°F, water temps have been the primary culprit behind the slow bottom bite. Multiple party-boat captains reporting to The Fisherman — Northern NJ — including the skippers of the Miss Belmar Princess and the Golden Eagle — pointed to rising temperatures and the building moon phase as the catalysts needed. Once water temps crest into the upper 50s, sea bass jigs tipped with squid and clam should become far more productive on nearshore wrecks and reefs.

Fluke action is building slowly but has real upside. The Fisherman — Central NJ reported one angler landing an early-season limit on a Gulp Flaming Chrome Turbo Shrimp tipped with a killie — a sign that fish are present even if the bite is not yet consistent. Fishermans HQ LBI confirms surf temps at the 50°F mark, a couple of degrees short of where fluke typically feed aggressively; outgoing tides in the back bays and river mouths remain the best windows for now, with a meaningful uptick expected by early June.

Bluefish have started arriving as a surf bonus. A 33-inch, 9.15-pound chopper was weighed in on May 17, per The Fisherman — Central NJ, and Grumpys Tackle (NJ) reported that the Governor's Cup at the Garden State Surf Fishing Classic — held May 17 at Island Beach State Park per NJ Fish & Wildlife News — went to a 31 6/8-inch bluefish. Expect choppers to start mixing into the surf more regularly alongside the dominant striper bite.

Offshore, The Fisherman — NJ/DE Offshore describes yellowfin tuna from 40 to 90 pounds crushing butterfish chunks and UVT jigs at the Bacardi, with bigeye, longfin, and swordfish active in the Hudson Canyon and mahi still showing around the pots. Weather windows are the main constraint — when seas allow, it is blue-water prime time off the Jersey coast.

For surf anglers, the waxing crescent moon is building toward stronger tidal movement through the week. Combined with forecast warmer air temperatures into Memorial Day weekend, the surf bite — already strong for stripers and black drum on clam — should remain lively and could deliver the season's most consistent bluefish action yet.

Context

Mid-May along the Jersey Shore typically marks the peak window of the spring striper migration, and the 2026 season has delivered exactly that. OTW Northern New Jersey labeled last month's run the "Best April Ever" after a particularly cold winter, and that momentum has carried into May with bass remaining active in the surf, bays, and nearshore structure coast-wide.

Water temperatures at 55–56°F are within the seasonal range for mid-May, though the winter's cold left a clear mark on the bottom bite. Capt Ron's Atlantic Highlands NJ documented bottom water as cold as 46–48°F at the sea bass opener in early May — roughly 8–10 degrees below where sea bass typically feed actively. That cold-water delay explains why party boats are still pulling ling as their primary catch and why sea bass numbers are running well below last year's pace, a pattern noted by multiple Northern NJ captains in The Fisherman — Northern NJ.

Black drum arriving in the surf alongside stripers in mid-May is broadly consistent with recent seasonal patterns; these fish tend to track warming coastal water in the 50°F range. Their presence this year appears robust, with The Fisherman — Southern NJ reporting fish to more than 40 pounds across oceanside beaches from Cape May to Atlantic City.

The delayed fluke bite also fits the cold-water spring template. Summer flounder tend to become consistent inshore feeders when water temperatures stabilize in the mid-to-upper 50s; the current 55–56°F readings put the region right on that threshold. No multi-year benchmark data is available in this report's data set to quantify how this compares to historical averages, but the on-the-water pattern — cold-delayed bottom species alongside a strong migratory striper run — is consistent with other cold-winter, late-warming seasons along this coast.