By Captain Chris Elser
It’s striper time in western Long Island Sound, and I am fired up to get this saltwater season underway. The past several years, the far western Sound near Stamford, Greenwich, Manhasset, and Hempstead has been the jackpot for migratory bass during May, but we occasionally see fish not taking the left turn out of New York Harbor. Instead, they chase their favorite bait, bunker, up the coast along the south shore of Long Island. This is actually a best-case scenario for waters in the New Haven to Westport area because these fish tend to come into Long Island Sound via the Race.
I have witnessed excellent fishing in the Stratford area as early as the first week of May. If a fish has sea lice on it, you know it has recently arrived from the Atlantic Ocean and there are likely more bass in the area.
My favorite way to target new arrivals of bass and blues each season is to find them in open water, chasing bunker schools near the surface. The next few months are going to be your best chance for hooking into huge blues and bass on surface plugs and flies. This method of fishing does require some motoring around, so when you do locate bunker schools near mid-Sound, create a waypoint to check out the next time you’re on the water. These fish often set up for weeks on bunker schools, and a good set of binoculars will save you time and fuel money.
The biggest challenge to hunting surface-feeding fish and searching for the disturbances caused by bunker being harassed is the wind. If it is too choppy, I opt to fish structure by drifting eels, trolling, or blind-casting with subsurface lures.
My go-to fly tackle for surface action is a 10-weight rod, slow-sinking intermediate line, 6-foot, 30-pound fluorocarbon leader, and a large bunker pattern like a 10- to 12-inch yak-hair fly. An accomplished fly-caster can easily present to the fish at a good distance in low to moderate winds. If I have “fly-only” clients on board and we can’t get the boat close enough to schools of bait and fish without spooking them, I will rig a spinning rod with a hookless Game On X-Walk or Doc lure, casting at bunker schools from a much greater distance to entice the fish closer to the boat. This often produces multiple hookups for fly anglers.
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For topwater fishing with spinning gear, I prefer a 10- to 20-pound 7-foot rod rigged with 30-pound smooth braided line and a 12-foot topshot of 20- to 30-pound leader. My lures of choice for early topwater fishing are, again, X-Walk or Doc and other walk-the-dog lures because their side-to-side action works better than a traditional popper. The idea is to get the attention of the fish that are in attack mode in and under the bunker schools, so a large presentation works best. If I do find a school of bait with primarily stripers on them and they are short-striking the hard lures, I switch to a large soft plastic like the 10-inch DuraTech Eel or a 9-inch Slug-Go. The white DuraTech is my first choice as it is naturally buoyant and has ample weight to cast long distances using an offset worm hook. It is also a bite-resistant plastic and I have caught many big blues on them.
Positioning your boat so that you don’t run over the bait and the fish is important. Even though this action tends to happen in deeper water, the fish and bait will go down for long periods of time, leaving you searching for another school that hasn’t been spooked. I position my boat upwind and up-current from the action, cutting off the power and drifting with the bait and fish just within casting distance. If you get lucky, you can often drift with a school of fish for hours without firing up the engine.
I find these fish in May throughout the western Sound, but 70 to 120 feet of water seems to be the “highway” they prefer. For those who like to fish in darkness, these fish are eager to hit bunker chunks near rip lines and structure, especially if you get a chum slick going. The topwater action is available during banker’s hours throughout the day once you find the bait, and the visuals are incredible when you witness a striper over 30 pounds smack your topwater lure.
Striped bass and bluefish action was nothing short of fantastic in 2023, and while it could have been better in 2024, I feel that we’re in for a good run this season. I also hope for a comeback of our fluke fishery, which opens May 4. There is nothing like a half day of casting to bass and blues, and then drifting for fluke to bring home a tasty dinner. Black sea bass opens May 17, and I’m crossing my fingers for a better kickoff than last season for what I believe to be the best-tasting fish available in the Sound.
By Josh Rayner
May is the month we impatiently await all winter and early spring in eastern Connecticut. With the continuing parade of schoolie and slot-sized striped bass arriving at their usual spring haunts, the anticipation of finding larger stripers, bluefish, weakfish, and assorted bottom species have many local anglers fired up. Make sure your vessel and gear are ready.
It’s always interesting to see how things will play out with the spring run of striped bass in eastern Long Island Sound. Some years, it starts with a bang; other years, we are left sitting on our hands, waiting for a big push of fish to arrive. Bunker (menhaden) are the driving force as to whether we will see the bass move eastward since the bunker are looking for warm, nutrient-rich water to feed. From year to year, their arrival time varies, and they sometimes beat the larger bass to their holding areas by a couple of weeks and are left unbothered. Some years, the bass chase them into rivers and bays.
If we start seeing large schools of adult bunker this month, you can bet there will be some larger bass right on their heels. Until then, schoolie and slot-sized fish will be filling out the catch, and they’ll be hitting a variety of smaller soft plastics, metal jigs, and small to medium topwater plugs. If you’re having trouble finding bass of any size out front, look at smaller salt creeks and rivers that feed into the sound, where a variety of small bait and, in some cases, river herring, will keep bass tucked into backwaters, usually until the second or third week of the month. You might be surprised at what you find in some of these unassuming areas. If the biting insects become too much to deal with, that’s your cue to ditch the small estuary bite and move to bigger water because most of the bass and bait have likely moved on, too.
May also brings bluefish to eastern Long Island Sound, and the last few seasons have given hope for their return to inshore waters. We’ve had a hiccup in bluefish activity for several years, resulting in a decrease to a 3-fish-per-day limit from 10 fish a day. It’s still a long road ahead before we are back to “normal” in terms of size and numbers of bluefish. We may never see that again locally, but it sure has been nice to have them inshore more consistently in recent years.
When talking about what makes a fish a sportfish, bluefish check all the boxes. They pull hard, put on an aerial show, and are downright ferocious, sometimes rolling over each other to chase down a surface plug. Sure, there are times when they’ll hit anything you throw at them, which is exciting, but just like any other fish, they can become so keyed in on specific forage that you have to work for them. In 2023, during the first couple weeks of May, small sand eels were the hot menu item for blues in some areas. I cut the tail off an old, chewed-up Gravity Tackle 13.5-inch GT Eel and used the last 3 or 4 inches, which was just heavy enough, to cast on a 5/0 screwlock swimbait hook using my schoolie rod. If I used anything with a bigger profile, it would get completely ignored by the blues. A fly would have been an even better presentation.
Weakfish numbers have been growing stronger each season, and what a comeback they have made. In addition to many being around, there have been some big ones in the mix, too. I suppose “big” is a relative term, though. What used to be considered a big weakfish would dwarf what is considered a big one today, but specimens in the 28- to 32-inch range have been caught with some consistency over the past few years, and I expect that trend to continue. There are now quite a few places to find them, with techniques to match each situation, but I really enjoy fishing shallow for them (in 15 feet or less), jigging soft plastics on fairly light tackle. They might not be everywhere you look, but select estuaries, bays, and flats should have them for the better part of the month.
One of the biggest weakfish I’ve ever caught died because it was violently shaking while I was removing it from the net. I gave my best effort in trying to revive it, but it was clear to me that it wasn’t going to swim away. I brought it home for the table (delicious when baked with butter, lemon, white wine and breadcrumbs), but I was saddened when I realized upon fileting that it was a female loaded with eggs. I learned from this mistake that these fish are quite delicate (weak, really), so try to handle them carefully.
The Connecticut season opener for fluke is May 4 and black sea bass opens May 18, so stock your bottom-fish tackle boxes accordingly. Every year, it seems that the regulations on these two species change in some way. There are still some outdated pages that populate a Google search, so make sure you are adhering to the most up-to-date regs you can find. I will admit that I am not the guy to ask about local early-season bottom-fishing since most of the productive grounds cannot be comfortably reached by kayak.
In fresh water, largemouth and smallmouth bass are still feeding hard in preparation for spawning, though once they bed up, I completely leave them alone. Pike fishing blows open in May, as they are well past their spawn. They may hang around in spawning bays for a little while, specifically the smaller males, but they often spread out, depending on the body of water in question. Pike in the Connecticut River take notice of any river herring and can be caught side by side with stripers in some cases, which makes for an interesting day of fishing. In addition to hitting flashy spinnerbaits and swimbaits, they will take topwater plugs meant for stripers.
Targeting pike in the Connecticut River has become noticeably more difficult in recent years. In addition to overfishing, several years ago, Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP) suspended their pike spawning program based at Haddam Meadows. his helped supplement the “self-sustaining” river pike population, and a portion of those fingerlings were distributed to other pike lakes around the state as well. (Fingerlings are now purchased from New Jersey.) Mostly mild winters haven’t resulted in a snowpack-fueled spring freshet, which usually coincides with the pike spawn, and has limited their spawning success in shallow, weedy bays. Connecticut River pike grow fast and die young (around a 10-year lifespan). Roughly five years have gone by without the DEEP’s intervention, which I think the strength of the fishery relies on. Most of my focus has now gone west to several lakes and the Housatonic River, which currently have more robust pike populations.
As things take shape in eastern Long Island Sound and its connecting waterways, many anglers will be getting back on the water for the first time since last fall, especially those who keep their boat at a marina. If you fish from a boat, don’t wait until you start hearing reports. Get out for a shakedown cruise to work out any bugs and assess any needed repairs to avoid missing good bite windows. Always have the proper safety equipment on board and in working order.
Bluefish on Bunker in Long Island Sound
