Although most anglers have jumped on the May bluefishing bandwagon within the last decade, I’ve been at it since the late 1970s. My discovery of these early spring bluefish may have been fortuitous, but it took some work to figure out the details.
Back then, April to May worming for stripers was very popular. Sandworms were a lot cheaper and we’d fish them, hoping to intercept the school stripers that “flew” by Long Island South Shore beaches on their migration to the east and north. It was fun, but my competitive juices were yearning for something more substantial. So, one early May dawn, with the tide just right and the wind perfect, I set out for Long Beach with the idea of coaxing a big striper or two off a bar using pencils and poppers. The beach was empty—always discouraging—but I trundled down the sand and began throwing lures into whitewater created by the waves crashing over the bar.
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Nothing happened for a while, but then I spotted a turbulent area to my right where current and waves were smashing together. I placed my 2 3/8-ounce Super Strike Little Neck Popper into that slot and was rewarded with a 16-pound blue. It wasn’t the cow striper I’d hoped for, but I have never (and will never) stick my nose up at big bluefish. As I picked away at the big blues, I began to wonder if this day was unusual or a seasonal pattern that had been overlooked by surf rats eager for stripers. My question could only be answered by repeated trips, which proved successful for early spring bluefish in the days, and years, that followed. Somewhere in the 1990s, word got out, and now a May run of big blues creates a picket line of anglers on every productive beach.
After a long winter and energy-consuming spawning, adult bluefish swarm inshore. By early May, there’s plenty of food in the shallow inshore ocean, inlets, and bays—these include sand eels, squid, bunker, shad, and sometimes mackerel. The blues push schools of bait toward the beach where the blues keep them pinned against shorelines and confined to inlets for several weeks. This pattern has failed from time to time, typically because the arrival of the blues did not coincide with the arrival of the bait schools and/or the proper water temperature.
The bluefish run is short-lived, and not every day is a good day—and not every beach and inlet benefits from the invasion. Typically, the blues burst on the scene out of nowhere and settle in quickly. Some spots may experience only monster fish (over 14 pounds); other spots may receive mixed sizes; still others may receive only a dose of small to medium blues. After two weeks or so, the run begins to wane as the average size of the blues drops off precipitously. Finally, we know the run is over when there are fewer and much smaller fish.
There’s little doubt that early spring bluefish are generally confined to the inlets, but the good news is that all South Shore inlets can boast schools of blues running a short distance up them and then out to the mouth on outgoing current. I’ve found that inlet bridges are consistently productive, as are any pronounced sandbars at the mouths of the inlets. As an example, blues love to slosh around at the Smith Point Bridge on flood tide current, but will often roam out to the ocean beach at Great Gun on the ebb tide. In a second case, blues move up Jones Inlet to the Meadowbrook Bridge, then down-tide to feed, spilling over the West Bar as well as running alongside the Jones Beach jetty. Overall, although structure helps locate fish, the real key to locating the blues is finding big schools of bait. That’s why I hunt them from beach to beach and inlet to inlet, looking for bait. I also search for the biggest fish I can find, so should I discover small- to medium-sized fish at one place, I’ll catch a few and then move on. I can offer this tip: if you find (see or smell) adult bunker, the blues will usually be very large.
I confess, I tend to make my first trips too early. I guess I’m anxious and don’t want to miss out on the first day of the run. If the weather is warmer than average, I’ll even try in late April—and have caught fish then. However, my initial catch is usually during the first week in May, but not always in the same place.
Although the night bite can be very good, especially in mid-May, I’ve found the day bite for early spring bluefish to be more consistent, and that’s how I focus my time. Tide is crucial, even though these are very hungry fish. Fish feed in the same ways regardless of their mood, although they may be more intense about it when famished.
An inlet location, for example, that tends to produce fish on the first of the incoming tide, will do so regardless of season or species; ocean beaches that produce best when the beach trough is full of water will do so during this run, too. Know your backyard beaches and how they work, rather than wandering far and wide chasing yesterday’s fish, and your production will be more consistent. This is a principle that I live by and advise the anglers I mentor to do the same. I like to fish, not drive around, so I have about a half-dozen spots on the North and South shores that are roughly thirty minutes from my house.
I always try to keep things simple, and this is especially true about my tackle. I never attempt to bring one of each style of lure, in multiple sizes, and in every color known to man! After all, what baitfish have you ever seen that are “parrot” colored? (Hold those cards and letters! I’m not saying that “parrot” color doesn’t catch fish, rather that I like to keep things simple.) My bag has a few 2 3/8-ounce Super Strike Little Neck Poppers, a few same-size Gibbs Pencil Poppers, a big metal lip swimmer (just in case), a few Charlie Graves J-6 and J-8 tins, and a line of 1- to 2-ounce bucktails all tucked neatly into one PVC tube.
I always add a strip of pork rind to my white bucktails, but if you run out of rind, an excellent alternative is Fat Cow Jig Strips.
All my plugs are more or less white. By that, I mean some may have green, yellow, or blue backs, but their sides and bottoms are white. I don’t care whether the tops are black or magenta, for that matter.
I always figure that if I can’t get a big, hungry blue to chomp on a white lure while chasing squid, bunker, or shad, then I guess that blue wasn’t very hungry to begin with. Seriously, keep it simple and concentrate on your casting and presentations instead of deliberating which lure, which size, and which color to put on the end of your line.
By the way, when using my 9-foot rod, I attach a lure via an 18-inch, 30-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon leader with a size-7 barrel swivel on one end and a 125-pound Tactical Anglers Power Clip on the end where the lure goes. Although there are many rods in different styles available from many manufacturers and beloved by their own supporters, I prefer either a 9- or 11-foot Lamiglas 1M for my surf fishing, because it casts lures very well, has the power to muscle fish when you need to, and is adaptable to a wide variety of fishing situations. I use a Van Staal 200 on my 9-foot rod, and a Van Staal 250 on my 11-foot rod. Regardless of my outfit, I use twenty-pound test Sufix Performance Braid, although I don’t object to thirty-pound test (and I sometimes use it in the fall or when fishing around obstructions). These combos cast lures from 1 to 4 ounces, tame any blue that might come my way, and are relatively light in weight.
You can also make life easier with a few adjustments to your lures. For instance, remove all treble hooks and replace them with a single large (6/0 to 8/0) Siwash hook on the rear of the lure. Also, fish with lures designed with single hooks, such as tins and bucktails. Single-hook lures are safer for both you and the fish, are easier to remove, and will get you back to fishing faster. Always carry a pair of 9-inch needle-nose pliers for hook removal. Buy a good pair, not a cheapo pair that will fall apart just when you need the tool most.
If you like to eat blues, then save one or two for the table, but set the rest free. If you really have no use for them, please don’t keep the legal bag limit simply because the law says you can. If we are good stewards of the sea, I believe good things—like strong runs of jumbo early spring bluefish—will continue to come back to us in the future.
Essential Plugs for Topwater Bluefish
