Bonito and Spanish Mackerel Fill In as Bluefin Bite Cools

What's biting

What's next

No live buoy or gauge readings came through for this update, so confirm water temps and tide times locally before heading out — but the seasonal signals line up: this reads as the handoff week between summer's midshore run and the classic Long Island fall blitz.

The bluefin bite that was "red-hot" in On The Water's August 20 report has cooled steadily since — "beginning to slow" by August 27, and slower still by September 3. Expect that midshore jig bite to keep tapering through the week as bait continues pushing inshore. Bonito and Spanish mackerel, which On The Water flagged as filling in behind the slowing tuna bite, should hold steady over the next several days as long as nearshore water stays warm — these hardtails typically stick around into mid-to-late September on the South Shore and East End.

The bigger story to watch is false albacore. On The Water's own reporting notes anglers are waiting on albies behind the bonito and Spanish mackerel, and shop reports from Saltwater Edge in nearby Rhode Island describe peanut bunker, silversides, bay anchovies, and sand eels already pushing out of back bays and estuaries into open water — the kind of bait movement that typically triggers the albie run up and down the coast. If that pattern extends into Long Island waters over the next week or two, expect false albacore to show on the same rips and structure currently holding bonito.

Fluke fishing, excellent off the South Shore in mid-August, stepped back after the August full moon per On The Water — a typical marker of fluke starting their move toward deeper, offshore wintering grounds. Inshore, weakfish, bluefish, and porgy should keep producing on the east end for anglers not chasing hardtails.

This weekend is a reasonable window to work the still-active bonito and Spanish mackerel bite before conditions fully turn over, and worth timing around dawn and dusk tide changes once local tide tables are checked, since specific tide data wasn't available for this report. Anglers targeting striped bass should start paying closer attention now, too — the fall run typically builds through September into October as baitfish concentrate along the coast.

Context

This reads as a fairly typical September transition for Long Island and Montauk waters. The sequence in On The Water's recent weekly reports — a hot bluefin jig bite in mid-August giving way to bonito and Spanish mackerel by month's end, with albies expected to follow — matches the standard late-summer-into-fall pattern for this stretch of coast, where hardtail species arrive in waves as nearshore temperatures ease off their summer peak.

The fluke slowdown following the August full moon is also a familiar seasonal marker; South Shore fluke fishing typically eases in early September as flatfish begin working toward deeper water ahead of the fall closures anglers should check before targeting them further.

Anglers Journal's recent notes on the Northeast striper fishery describe the fall blitz period as the "heartbeat" of the regional fishery, typically intensifying in the weeks before the fall equinox as baitfish and gamefish begin marshaling for their southward migration — which lines up with where the calendar sits now.

One outlier worth flagging: two tiger sharks landed on consecutive nights off Long Island, per On The Water — a genuinely unusual result for the area, more a sign of an active, bait-rich system than a repeatable seasonal trend.

There's no direct water-temperature or buoy comparison available in this report to say definitively whether the season is running early or late relative to prior years. Based on the reported species timeline alone, though, the transition looks on-schedule for a typical Long Island September.