Summer Bonito and Fluke Fishing on Long Island

Summer Bonito and Fluke Fishing on Long Island

My coffee didn’t survive for 5 minutes after we broke the inlet. After the through-the-night drive from Ocean City, New Jersey to Freeport, New York, I’d been counting on that caffeine to keep the senses sharp for a day of fluke fishing off Long Island’s South Shore. I watched with dread as the metal mug dismounted from the cutting board onto the deck of Captain Doug Toback’s 35-foot Duffy, where its contents drained out the scuppers and into an ocean that was just beginning to reflect the predawn light. 

Fluke, large fluke, were the primary target of the trip. Every August, Doug devotes his days to running farther to find the largest fluke of the season as they begin their offshore migration through the New York Bight to the edge of the continental shelf. I didn’t want to be groggy for the chance at my largest flatfish of the year, so I welcomed the news that we’d be stopping partway to the fluke grounds for a warmup bonito troll. Nothing clears brain fog like the sound of a screaming drag. 

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Atlantic bonito were everywhere in 2024. They arrived early in New England and settled into midshore tuna grounds off New Jersey and New York in immense numbers. DJ Toback, Doug’s son and first mate on Corazon Fishing Charters, had set only two of the four-rod trolling spread when we had the first knockdown. Over the next couple hours, DJ managed to set all four rods only twice, and even then, it was a matter of minutes before another bonito interrupted him. 

Bonito bit so quickly, it was nearly impossible to set the full four-rod spread without hooking a fish.

Doug’s bonito spread looks like a miniaturized tuna spread. He sets two small trolling feathers on flat-line clips just beyond the propwash. Beyond them, he fishes two tiny, three-arm spreader bars fitted with 2- to 3-inch soft-plastic squids. The spread kept bonito with the boat all morning, leaving DJ, Nick Cancelliere, and me in a nearly constant state of fighting fish.

One bonito in the boat and another on the line.

The seas, though calming, had built to 6 feet earlier in the week, courtesy of a stiff south wind. The lumpy conditions may have triggered the bonitos’ frenzied feeding, and they definitely thinned out the would-be fleet working the area. Being able to comfortably sail in such “crowd-controlling” forecasts is exactly what led Doug to a Downeast-style boat.

The Corazon had a rich fishing history before finding its way to Doug in September 2020. For years, it worked the waters of Montauk as the Westlake, and while it had, as Doug puts it, “good karma and a great layout,” it needed some love. Over the next 9 months, Doug and DJ, partnering with Baldwin Harbor Marine replaced “basically, everything” on the 35-foot Duffy.

The upgraded vessel has a spacious, climate-controlled cabin, a large cockpit with plenty of fishing room, and a stable, fast ride that allows Doug to fish everything from stripers just off the beach to overnighters in the canyons. 

The Corazon, a 35-foot Duffy, allows Toback and his crew to fish everything from big stripers just off the beach to overnighters in the Canyons. (Photo by Adam Eldridge)

Our bonito ranged from frisky 2-pounders to larger fish pushing 7 pounds, with the big ones putting up spirited battles on the light conventional tackle. We kept a few, released a bunch, and stayed on the troll into the mid-morning, hoping to pull a bluefin out of the bonito swarm. Yet, besides a stray bluefish and an early false albacore for Nick, we couldn’t get past the bones.  

With the crew properly warmed up, Toback pushed the boat south for another 30 minutes before pulling back the throttles at one of his big fluke numbers. During the ride, DJ passed around bowls of chicken rice, an Ecuadorian specialty and the house favorite at the Toback residence.  It was immediately apparent why. As we ate our first and second servings, the seas mellowed out, and after lamenting that his wife makes chicken rice only when DJ is home from college, Toback explained his fluke program.

The strategy involves short drifts over small pieces of structure. As he sets up each drift, Doug remains at the wheel, eyes on his fishfinder, working together with his crew, instructing them when to drop. Anyone still fiddling with their rig, checking their phone, or otherwise day-dreaming risks dropping their rig too late and having their baits land behind the structure, where undersized sea bass greedily attack the squid and spearing combos. 

Doug’s go-to fluke rig is a high-low rig fitted with floating jigheads, made by M3 Tackle. He supplies his crew with the standard spearing and squid pennants, but breaks the mold when it comes to scented artificials, opting for FishBites over Berkley Gulp. I’ve used my share of FishBites over the years, baiting my surf kingfish rigs with the company’s imitation bloodworms, but I had never fished them for fluke. The bait is made of a scented paste molded around a mesh strip that holds it onto the hook. In the water, the bait slowly dissolves, sending out a scent trail and attracting the fish.  They act as an insurance policy against bait-stealing species, keeping anglers from “fishing on credit” when coming through the sweet spot. 

Toback’s fluke rigs are fitted with floating jigheads from M3 Tackle that are then tipped with FishBites Grubs and/or E-Z Squid for scent.

We dropped the FishBites E-Z Squid, a white segmented ribbon that Toback cut into roughly 5-inch lengths. The synthetic bait, paired with the colorful skirted hooks and natural baits, made a robust offering to the fluke below, with the goal of enticing the fish that met New York’s strict minimum size. 

In 2024, New York split the fluke season, with the first half—May 4 to August 1—carrying a 19-inch size limit, and the second half—traditionally the trophy fluke season for Long Island’s western South Shore—bumping the minimum size to 19.5 inches. In my old fishing photo albums, there are plenty of pictures of me grinning widely while holding fluke that, today, would not even be New York keepers. 

Meeting those high minimum sizes, along with having a shot at a doormat, is what drives captains like Toback farther offshore for fluke. It’s a common theme throughout the Northeast, with fishermen making similar and longer runs to fluke grounds beyond Block Island or Nantucket, where fishing water as deep as 100 feet is common. 

To effectively fish these depths, and keep the fishing fun, fishermen scale down their braided line to the ultra-thin 20-pound test. This cuts down on water resistance, and therefore, the amount of lead needed to hold bottom, which allows anglers to fish lighter, more fun tackle. On the Corazon, Toback outfits his crews with Daiwa Harrier slow-pitch jigging rods and Daiwa Lexa baitcasting reels that sit comfortably in the palm, making it easy to impart action to the rig below. 

Over the years I always found it remarkable that the most abundant fluke size manages to be just an inch under whatever the minimum length happened to be. And so it was aboard the Corazon. We caught 17- and 18-inchers aplenty, and the first drift yielded a 21-incher that Toback deftly netted for me. 

Though I’d been warned, I was still surprised by the shortness of Toback’s drifts. They were downright surgical as he focused on structure that the substantial fleet of fluke-obsessed New Yorkers easily overlook.

Toback watches his electronics closely to find subtle structures that other captains overlook.

Toback locates these spots by marking a waypoint every time he sees rubble, bait on the bottom, or a lump. Even while drifting reefs, he makes a new waypoint whenever a fish is hooked. Over time, this has created areas of clustered waypoints at different depths on his chart plotter, and he’s able to find the patterns among all that data to help him locate the fish. It’s familiar territory for Toback, whose previous career was technology and data analysis on Wall Street. 

On the soft bottom beyond the structure, in addition to the short sea bass, we caught plenty of ling. It had been years since I’d caught more than one or two ling on a trip, so it was great to see this small member of the cod family coming up two or three at a time on a few consecutive drifts.

Bug-eyed, slug-shaped, and equipped with long, tentacle-like fins, ling—officially known as red hake—are one of the uglier bottom-dwellers of the New York Bight. Despite their homeliness, small size, and general lack of spirit on the end of a line, in decades past, ling kept headboats full and sailing right through the winter months. Their abundance and firm, white meat drew crowds of anglers seeking both a cure for cabin fever and fresh fillets. We added the ling to a cooler and continued our drifts in search of fluke. 

With their firm, white fillets, ling—also known as red hake—have been known to attract crowds of winter headboat fishermen in New York and New Jersey.

It’s a rarity that a fishing trip saves the best for last. Most often, the peak comes sometime in the middle, with a tapering off of both the fishing action and angler enthusiasm until everyone agrees that it’s time to head for the barn. My trip aboard the Corazon followed that trajectory as the undersized fluke became more infrequent, and only one more keeper hit the deck during more than a dozen drifts. 

Toback declared the final drift over another of his favorite fluke numbers, and as soon as he declared “Drop them,” three fluke rigs headed for the bottom. I was staring down the barrel of my rod, willing a fluke to bite when, in my peripheral vision, I saw DJ swing. 

The rod bucked wildly and bent to the foregrip, its soft action dampening the ferocity of the fluke’s headshakes and keeping the hook from tearing free. DJ worked the fish to the surface and Doug stabbed out with the net, and the father-son duo closed the deal on the New York Doormat. 

DJ Toback’s last drift doormat inspired the crew to check some lobster pots for mahi on the ride in.

Enthusiasm reignited, Toback took the long way home, seeing if any of the lobster pot buoys would offer up a mahi to add one last splash of color to the cooler. We found the mahi, but they were deep and sulking, showing no interest in our baits, perhaps already having been targeted by another boat heading in from the tuna grounds. 

With that, Toback plotted a course toward Jones Inlet. I found my long-ago emptied coffee mug and tossed it in my pack before grabbing a seat in the Corazon’s comfortable cabin. I considered closing my eyes and grabbing a quick nap as the boat bounded over the gentle swell, but despite the early wake-up call and unintentional caffeine fast, I discovered I was wide awake. 

Related Content

Trolling Tips for Bonito

Seven Tips for Hooking Fluke

6 Rigs to Know for Fluke Season

WATCH: Bonito & Fluke Fishing off Freeport, Long Island | S22 E02 – OTW’s Angling Adventures

Source: https://onthewater.com/summer-bonito-and-fluke-fishing-on-long-island

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