There is slightly better news to report on the “bones” front for this week. Some of the bonito and Spanish mackerel that were tight along the near-New Jersey beaches are reported to have moved into Jamaica Bay. While the formerly steady Rhode Island fish have been an on-again, off-again proposition, and with some good catches one day and spotty action the next, a few pods of “bones” have been encountered in the extreme eastern reaches of Long Island Sound, and even fewer pods more further west. A friend of mine who fishes under the radar managed two fish this week out in areas of the eastern Sound. Reports of bonito in the western reaches of the south shore have been slim to non-existent. It will be interesting to see if those N.J. and J-Bay fish move east along the coast or up into the Sound. There’s plenty of bait around so the fish have options. There have also been bonito and abundant skipjack offshore traveling with the larger tuna so it remains to be seen if those fish choose to move inshore or stay out in blue water. Some of you also asked if I might suggest a rationale for this year’s pattern of local bonito behavior. The short answer is that fish do what fish do, not what we always expect based on prior seasons. A lot of variables affect fish species’ movements: water temperature, weather and winds, availability of preferred bait, water quality, spawning instincts and the element of serendipity…and do they ultimately take a left turn or a right turn in their wanderings. Many of the “bones” in our area seem to be traveling with their other tuna cousins and are mixed in with bluefin, yellowfin, skippies and ablies, all of whom have found good water. You can also find bonito mixed in with bluefish, usually hanging on the fringes, picking off the easy meals. Bonito are also affected by another key element, as are other fish, birds, mammals and anything else that migrates…angle and available amount of sunlight and length of day. That latter element has triggered mass migrations for millennia and presents a bit of a modern day dilemma for local bonito anglers. My best year for bones in the 33 that I have been fishing for them involved a great September run that ran into the first three weeks of October. But there were early fish around that year in August as well. That year also witnessed incredibly large schools of exceptionally large spearing, and from my personal experience and observation that is a preferred baitfish – big bonito love them. But as the days of this season shorten and fish begin to instinctively sense the pending migration, the big question involves timing and whether or not they will still head east only to then head back west. I’ve caught bonito well into November so the game in the central parts of Long Island is still a wide-open one. While all that remains to be seen, my humble guess is that we will still see a reasonable semblance of a run for both bonito and albies in those areas.
