Bluefish fishing guide.

Where the Bluefish bite is on right now

Hero spots in our coverage where Bluefish is in season for May. Click through for the live forecast.

Best bait

• Cut bunker / menhaden chunks
• Whole live bunker on snag hooks (for big blues)
• Live mackerel (spring run)
• Fresh-cut squid
• Whole pilchards on a ganged hook rig

Best lures

• Metal lures — Hopkins, Acme Kastmaster, Krocodile spoons 1–4 oz
• Surface plugs / poppers (SP Minnow, Daiwa SP Salt Pro, Atom 40) at dawn / dusk
• Bucktail jigs with strip baits or pork rind
• Hard-bodied diving plugs (Bomber Long A, Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnow)
• Tin squids and chrome diamond jigs on jetties

Technique

Surf and jetty: cast metal lures into back-of-the-breaker rips at dawn or dusk; fast retrieve, no pauses. When blues are blitzing on bait, the action is unmistakable — birds working, surface boils, baitfish flying. Boat: troll spoons or umbrella rigs near bird workups, or cast plugs into the boil. Always use wire trace (or heavy 80 lb fluorocarbon at minimum) — bluefish teeth shred mono and braid instantly. Bleeding and immediate icing is essential for table quality.

Tide windows that matter

Tide change windows on jetties and rips fish hardest — the last two hours of outgoing or first push of incoming. Slack is dead. Surf gutters fish best on the run-up tide at dawn.

Moon & solunar

Bluefish are weakly moon-dependent — the migrations through Long Island Sound and Cape Cod waters in spring and fall are temperature-driven, not moon-driven. That said, spring tides on new and full moons produce stronger rips which produce more reliable feeding lanes.

Regulations

Federal Atlantic: 3 per person per day (recreational, charter boat 5), no minimum size at federal level — states may add minimums. NY, MA, NJ have aligned at 3 per person. Always verify state DEC / DMF rules. The population has been stressed and bag limits tightened in 2020.