Greetings. We hope you enjoyed your holiday weekend. We have some great news to report so on to it. Our deepest condolences and sympathies go out to the friends and family of the fisherman who lost his life last week in Broad Channel. We want to remind everyone to use extreme caution and continue to practice safe fishing.

As you know, the 2nd half of the fluke season opened up last week and the fishing has been good in both the bays and the ocean. Your best bet for keepers… is in the bay. Some of the better fluke fishing areas include the channel edges in Merrick Bay, Rowboat Alley, Haunts Creek and Swift Creek. There have been some good numbers and fish up to 6 pounds in these areas.

For those going for ocean fluke, Macalister Reef and Hempstead Reef have been producing decent numbers but few keepers in the mix. This is not cast in stone as it can change from day to day. Using bait rigs or bucktail teaser rigs have been doing very well. *Fishing Tip*: the hot rig for the week has been a teaser rig with an RM’s fluke dart or fluke candy in 1/4 or 3/8 size tipped with either spearing or GULP, one about 4″ above the bottom the other 14″ up. Fish this rig with either a plain sinker or hook less bullet. The best part is you will not catch any skates on this rig!