2023 fall run fishing a ‘mixed bag’

Surfcasters searching for striped bass wait all year for the start of the “fall run.” Many save their vacation days for it. Pickup trucks adorned with multiple rod holders and cooler racks begin appearing on roadways somewhere between the start of the school year and when most of us are focused on picking pumpkins. Fishermen line the beaches early in the morning, especially on the East End, hoping to intercept Atlantic striped bass on their migration south from New England to the Chesapeake Bay. This year, some have said it’s the worst fall run they’ve fished in a while. 

Charlie O’Neill of Sound Beach fishes the North Fork at least five days a week in the fall. He hits all the hot spots, from Orient Point west to Rocky Point Road Beach, and said he has fished one good day since Labor Day. “I had one bass eight days ago,” he lamented. “It was better last year.” His fishing buddy, Paul Becker of Rocky Point — who Mr. O’Neill knew only as “Paul North Fork” until The Suffolk Times interviewed them together at Truman’s Beach in Orient — concurred that the fishing is off this year. 

Normally, Mr. Becker said, as the fish come through a beach, one can tell exactly where they are as the anglers’ rods bend over one after the other, like falling dominoes. He said the anglers line up, but the fish aren’t coming through this year like before.

The fish follow the bait and, traditionally, surfcasters can expect to witness fall “blitzes,” where the stripers corral bait schools close to shore and the surface. As the bait fish­ — usually Atlantic menhaden, or bunker — jump to escape the predators, the water appears to froth and boil. All the white water created makes stripers particularly susceptible to artificial lures. Fishing blitzes can be exciting and fast, and they can extend the length of an entire beach, making room for plenty of fishermen to get in on the action. Mr. O’Neill said he’s only seen one blitz so far this year.

Bill Czech of Jamesport Bait and Tackle said the only thing missing in this year’s fall run is bluefish. He said big gator bluefish ravaged South Jamesport around Mother’s Day this year, but this fall they’ve been found only sporadically. Even in the boats, he said Jessup Neck in Noyack was a great spot at buoy 17 on the incoming tide was working great, but the bite didn’t hold. He said the snappers — which are juvenile bluefish that usually fill bays and harbors in August and September — arrived late and were few and far between.

“Blackfishing off the beach from Horton’s Point to Orient is really good right now,” Mr. Czech said. “Find a rocky area and go fishing.” He said the fish are in close and all fishermen need are blackfish hooks and green crabs for bait. Blackfish need to be 16 inches to be kept, and once the water temperature drops, the fish will move off into deeper water down to 60 feet. Right now, though they are staging in 18- to 20-foot depths, putting them within reach of surfcasters, Mr. Czech said.

He also said anglers can catch false albacore — a small species of tuna — from the shore with small diamond jigs and epoxy jigs from Truman’s Beach to Mulford Point. He added that Truman’s can look like a drive-in movie during the peak of the fall run. “They come from all over the place,” he said. 

The majority of the surfcasters lined up on Truman’s Beach early Wednesday morning were tossing Deadly Dicks for “albies” and had driven out from as far as Stony Brook. All agreed that the fall run hasn’t come together this year like it has in years past. They agreed the bite is off; there are fish here and there, but not the fast-fishing of the traditional fall run. As one surfcaster was retying his epoxy jig he said: “I’d take a goldfish right now. But I’m happy to be out here and not sitting watching the news, getting aggravated.”

Larry Welcome of Cutchogue, a surfcasting plug builder and president of the North Fork Anglers fishing club, was more positive, saying his fall run is landing somewhere in between on fire and disappointment. “It depends on how you look at it,” he said. “There have been much better years, with more diverse species of bait: herring, mullet, spot, spearing, sand eels and others.” 

Mr. Welcome said that when small bay anchovies, peanut bunker and mullet showed for a week each in July and September,“the fishing was good.” He’s been fishing for 60 years, moved to Cutchogue in 1974 and has focused his fishing on the North Fork the last 10 years. This year, he said, there have been only six really good weeks of fishing since mid-May… Mr. Welcome said he can usually pick a dozen striped bass regardless of when and where he fishes, which he attributed that to knowing the spots within the spots. 

“It’s not gangbusters right now, but that could change,” he admitted. “If herring, spot and alewives show up, it could be very good.”