Big Bluefish Arrive

The bluefish 2023 season on Long Island off to a great start. Large bluefish have moved into out back bays and can be targeted along the inlets of the island. Best way to target them is using a top water popper with conventional tackle, but my preferred method is using a fly rod and a top water fly. Big bluefish are strong and once hooked they will give you long-fast runs so a good fly fishing outfit to use would be a 9wt with 20lb leader and 17-20lb wire tippet.

Bluefish are aggressive and deliver powerful strikes which makes them a great game fish, however they do not seem to care about the fly presented as long as it looks right, so save your pretty flies for gamefish that are more selective to the presentation and bring out the ugly ones for the blues.

The action these fish offer to the recreational angler is priceless and so we should treat them right in order to preserve this great fishery. If you are not going to harvest a bluefish, keep it as little as possible out of the water, change your poppers so that they have only use one hook, using trebles can cause a lot of damage to both the angler and the fish.

The following is a short reel with some of the highlights this season so far, but I'll have more of the action in a new YouTube video shortly.

Best of luck and tight lines!

Sergio