Checked the Brewster Flats channel off of Robbins Hill Rd out on Saturday morning. Various types of lures and flies did nothing but gather weeds.
Then, just to prove to myself that the fish are there and just getting more selective, I tried fresh sand eels on the bottom. Nothing happened until the tide started to turn back in. Then they started hitting. After about a half dozen schoolies to 22 inches, I had a big strike which turned out to be a double-header (I was using a high-low rig) of one 32-inch keeper and a 20-inch schoolie. I then had an even bigger strike, clearly a bigger fish, but it was poorly hooked and got off about halfway in.
By now, the tide was coming in hard and I had to head back in, casting sand eels as I went. About a 1/3 or the way in, I got another nice hit and pulled in a 34-incher. Interestingly, this fish was in 2-3 ft of water only about 10 ft away from my feet. The limitations of bait fishing of course are that it's imcompatible with catch and release (which I do almost exclusively) unless you strike very quickly and hopefully mouth hook the fish. This I was able to do on all but the biggest fish, which I had to spend considerable time reviving. Hopefully it survived.
Hoping for a repeat performance Sat. evening, I returned there but only managed a 22 incher on bait. Also, the tide was no where near as low as in the morning, so the fish were more dispersed.
Sunday morning's 4:30 AM slack tide at the Canal looked good for jigging, so I tried near the radar station at pole 255 and also at the Coalyard, but the fish wouldn't cooperate. No one was doing much on chunks either...
-bd