Striped Bass Starts • Blues Not Far Behind • Trout Fishing Is Hot

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The locally stocked lakes continue to see a good pick at Brown Trout on all sorts of lures and baits. Common lures being used are kastmasters, blue fox spinners and phoebe lures. Bait fishermen have been using nightcrawlers, wax worms and Power bait(dough) to catch fish. Local fisherman have been having excellent luck on power baits,  wax worms and nightcrawler these past couple of days.

Largemouth Bass at the lakes is picking up too. The warming water has got the bass to feed more aggressively.  Live shiners are the number one choice for LM Bass. However, using a senko worm or Berkley worm (rigged weedless) can draw some strikes too.

while we have very few reports of Flounder or Blackfish yet, we are stocked with baits and rigs so that you can try your luck at catching these fish. Seeking Warm water in the early spring season is critical to success for Flounder or Blackfish. Chumming heavily will increase your odds greatly on getting a bite going. Skimmer Clams and Sandworms would be the dominate bait for these elusive spring time fish.

For weeks now we have been hearing about the loads of bait in our local bays and creeks. Bunker and big spearing are the two main baitfish people have been spotting. This is a excellent sign for the early season. Striped Bass season opened April 15th, reports of decent sized fish being caught in New Jersey and the Hudson, these fish will be here in the weeks to come ! However Some reports of schoolie sized fish are starting to be heard from areas out west and east on the island. Our local Creeks and rivers tend to hold a decent population of holdover bass too. A couple of anglers have managed to hook into some of these fish while white perch fishing. An effective early season bait for stripers is a sandworm or clam on a simple high-low CICLE HOOK rig . Lures for these holdovers/schoolies stripers are small bass assassins, small swim shads, swimbaits like sp minnows or Mag darters as well.

With all these bait fish around we are starting to see a good pick of fish coming from the west end bays. Places like little neck bay and Jamaica bay have been producing solid bass from 20 to 35 inches. while most are utilizing kayaks for these fish. They are trolling tubes tipped with sandworms, behind their kayak. others are fishing soft plastics on light jig head. From what fishermen are saying tube and worm is out fishing any other technic 4 to 1.

In another few weeks, bluefish will start making an appearance.  Fluke is "scheduled" to open at the beginng of May and weakfish are not far behind.  

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