Quote Originally Posted by DarkSkies View Post
Orient Point - The significance of Orient Point as the North Fork of LI, and a strategic stop in the LI Sound for migrational bass, cannot be understated.

The rips and rock piles in that area offer tremendous feeding opportunities for bigger bass....
There are times during late Sping and Summer periods that bass can be found there for months at a time....

This year, for some reason thus far....the bass could not be found at Orient in any great numbers...

**Let me qualify that....
There are still a few boats that have been targeting them. and doing OK......

The majority of boats that target bass at night, have been targeting fluke and scup this year....and sea bass when the season is open.....
Time for an Orient Point update here...
Since I posted the above, there has been an increase in the action...
The first week of August....some of the boats started catching bass at Orient...are now targeting them and doing well.

The significance of Orient Point, and my earlier concern, still stands.
This is not a secondary area. It's a strategic stop on the striped bass migrational highway every year.

Usually, bass start showing up in numbers and sizes in May and June.
You could certainly make the argument that because of the cold winter, things have been "later" this year.
I buy into that, to an extent.

Here we have the months of June and July, with no (significant) showings of bass at Orient...until the first week of August....
If you know and understand that area, you would remember the outstanding catches they usually get during the June and July months....

This year, for the most part, there were not enough numbers of bass for the party and charter boats to go out there and justify looking for them during those months...













Folks who read this, need to remember striped bass and the M&M theory discussed elsewhere in these forums.
http://stripersandanglers.com/Forum/...of-the-fishery

If they were not stacked up at Orient Point, a place as strategically important as Montauk.....
Think of the possible explanations......
For the most part, it logically points to a reduced biomass.....

Don't take my word for it....
Ask the Capts out there who make a good living from targeting bass, when they are there.....and ask them why they didn't show up until the first week of August this year......when they were moving through the Sound on the Eastward migration in June...and had already reached the Canal and other points on the NS of MA during June/July........





Quick update on the Montauk Bite....
More bass have been caught as I'm posting this.......You have to realize a large % of those catches come from Block Island and other areas that are in relatively deeper water....
There's nothing wrong with that....
And truthfully speaking, even the boats who are steaming to Block every night....are having inconsistent results....

However in recent days the amount of bunker and other forage fish..... loading up in the shallower areas around Montauk has been noted...
If the bass numbers were truly as strong as some claim....there would be many more fish inshore feeding on these forage fish.....instead of just being found on the lumps and deeper rockpiles.....Food for thought....


Thanks for reading....
And for your comments as well.....