8/10: Small Blues at Goff Pt

[Tuna]

Saw nothing on my trip to the south shore. Once there, a nice swell and murky water had me quit my normal shore spots for bass without getting a touch. Decided to run to Gardiners, but stopped at Goff Point to play with small blues.

Was using a crease fly in the hopes I'd get more hits than hookups. This worked great for a while, with as many as 10-15 hits before a hookup. Beautiful flips, splashes, etc. Even though the blues were under a pound, the ones that stayed on gave good fights and one finally bit the crease fly in half. Rather than sacrifrice another, switched to a clouser, but this killed my hit/hookup ratio - I was hooking up on every hit, and not getting as many jumps and flips and stuff. By this point, it had been raining lightly for about 30 minutes so I called it a day (almost went back out when the rain slowed down to a mist, but passed on the idea).

[fmw]

Got a few of those small blues at Sammy's Beach on Saturday evening as they came rampaging through for about ten minutes. I had thought about going out to Goff Point to fish, but didn't venture that far. Tuna, were those blues coming up in casting range around Goff Point? What have the blues been chowing on? If anchovies, it bodes well for fall. Also, again saw a school of blues (wishful thinking: Albies) ripping up the water about a hundred fifty yards off Main Beach on Sunday afternoon.

[Tuna]

The blues I found off Goff Pt were outside of casting range of shore, but I only stuck with them for about an hour, so its possible they ventured in later.

I'm not entirely sure what they were feeding on - the light was poor, so I didn't see the bait in the water - a few of the blues spit up some bait, but it was pretty digested so its hard to tell. They were very small (about the size I'd expect bay anchovies to be) but might have been anything.

I've read a number of reports indicating that (bay anchovies) is what the small blues are feeding on, but I am not totally convinced (or concerned if I am right they are something else). I expect to see balls of brown bait bunched up when the bay anchovies come in, and I didn't see that.

However, there is a ton of bait all over. Even the south side showed birds taking small bait around shore, Montauk Lake has tons of bait of various sizes, although I saw no bait around Goff Pt because of the light, there was obviously a lot around.

So the albies will have plenty to gorge on even if the bay anchovies haven't arrived in force yet.

(hint, hint albies, time to show, there's plenty of bait and you don't have to worry about me - the first few times I see you, I'll go crazy and snag my line and cast poorly and strip the line too fast and all sorts of things to make me a minor issue to your existence - just show up, its around time!!!!)