Fluke Bite Builds Across Long Island as Gator Blues Arrive Off Montauk

What's biting

What's next

If the pattern reported across the South Shore and East End holds, the fluke bite should keep building over the next few days. Bob's Bait and Tackle already has anglers posting limit catches out of the State Channel between Amityville and Babylon, per The Fisherman — Long Island South Shore, and White Water Outfitters says the bite has only just "kicked into gear" inside Shinnecock Bay, per The Fisherman — Long Island East End — both read as early innings rather than a peak, with more keepers likely as fish keep settling into summer structure on the reefs and in the back bays.

Porgy fishing is a mixed bag by location and worth planning around rather than assuming uniform action: Montauk is producing "tremendous" scup fishing and the North Shore beaches from Asharoken to Crab Meadow to the mouth of the Nissequogue River are steady on sandworms, per The Fisherman — Long Island East End and The Fisherman — Long Island North Shore, while City Island's porgy grounds have gone quiet. Anglers chasing scup should lean toward Montauk or the North Shore beach spots over the next few days rather than the western Sound. Triggerfish are also popping up in multiple new spots — the jetties and bay inside Shinnecock, the rocks at South Shore inlets, and inlet structure along the surf — a seasonal warm-water visitor worth targeting as a bonus while working fluke rigs.

Offshore, the tuna bite is trending toward the weekend as boats dial in the grounds: Block Canyon produced a 122-pound bigeye plus yellowfins for Babylon Fishing Station, and the Coimbra, Ranger, and Haps grounds continue holding bluefin feeding on squid and sand eels, per The Fisherman — Long Island South Shore and The Fisherman — Long Island East End. Striped bass anglers should plan around darkness and the tide change rather than daylight hours — nighttime live-eel and soft-plastic bites are consistently outproducing daytime efforts from the North Shore to the surf, and that pattern should hold as water stays warm through the week.

Context

This week's pattern tracks fairly typical for mid-July on Long Island. On The Water — New York / Long Island's July 9 report already noted the "big bass bite off Montauk beginning to slow down," and this week's shift toward a mostly after-dark striper bite — described independently by both The Fisherman — Long Island North Shore and The Fisherman — Long Island Surf — is the expected seasonal move as fish push to deeper, cooler water and feed more actively outside peak daylight heat.

Fluke fishing may be running slightly ahead of a typical mid-July pace: multiple South Shore and East End sources describe limit catches and a bite that has "finally kicked into gear" rather than the slower starts sometimes reported earlier in summer, which lines up with the NY DEC Saltwater Fishing and Boating newsletter's notice that the recreational summer flounder season is underway. Porgy fishing shows the more typical patchwork of hot-and-cold spots by location that's normal for scup through the season.

On the concern side, OTW Surfcasting's recent piece on lagging striper spawning success, alongside NY DEC's continued "Fish Smart, Striped Bass" messaging, reflects an ongoing multi-year conversation about the health of the striper fishery rather than anything specific to this week's catch reports. No source in this week's feeds offered a direct year-over-year water-temperature or catch-rate comparison, so treat the "ahead of pace" read on fluke above as a qualitative impression from this week's reports rather than a hard data comparison.