Westport Outfitters (Norwalk) Fishing Report

• Inshore we continue to have much success with the Sand Eels still in abundance but we do say that they are on the decline, so get out there while the getting is good before this bait disperses and our resident fish move to deeper waters and we have to break out the sinking lines. Sunday night we guided “Nat” from Maine on the flats and young Patrick got him into a bunch of blues and bass including a keeper striper off of Westport on a small sand eel epoxy fly hand tied by our own Pete Viviano, Jr. Good fun on the 8wts!
• Bunker schools were definitely in abundance in the Norwalk/Westport area over the weekend and early into the week. Continue to try and drift with these schools hopefully to find bass underneath. These fish still have yet to see the type of pressure that is typical at this time of year. Looking back to our reports from last year during this same time period, we already had juvenile snappers being pounded on. Although one of our scouts did see some small schools of snappers across over in LI last week, they have yet to show themselves on this side yet. At this time last year, the resident stripers had also begun to stack up on some of our local reefs, ideal for trolling tubes. We have yet to see this occur as of yet either, but get them trolling rigs ready and don’t forget about our seasonal pre rigged trolling combos with lead core.
• Saturday’s charters did well locally with stripers up to 30 inches on light tackle using Crystal Minnows and Rebel Jumpin’ Minnows. With the fireworks on deck for Tuesday we did not fish but were back at it on Wednesday. Despite what the fish probably thought was the end of the world on Tuesday night, Captain Chris managed a fat 37 inch fish on chunks outside of the Islands and then ventured back out for Fluke Wednesday afternoon. The fluke bite has definitely moved across the sound to our side. Try Middle Passage, the shoals, as well as around Sunken Island in Fairfield. No need to run across at this point, so save the fuel money and come on down to stock up on some hard baits and leaders since Mr. Bluefish is definitely making his presence more known recently.