East End
Baitfish.

The single most important baitfish on the East End. Adult bunker run 8 to 14 inches and travel in dense, oily schools that you can spot from a half-mile away by the dimpled water and circling gulls.

If something is happening, bunker are usually the reason. Big bass live and die on bunker. So do bluefish, sharks, weakfish, and just about every predator that can swallow a hand-sized fish.

Look for them inside Three Mile Harbor, off Napeague, and along the south side bars from May through November. Fall pushes can stack them by the millions.

Baby bunker, 2 to 4 inches, and the single most important fall run trigger on the East End. When peanut bunker push out of Long Island Sound on the seasonal exodus, they bring everything with them.

The fall blitz — surface explosions of bass, blues, and false albacore tearing into massive schools — is almost always a peanut bunker event. Match the hatch and you fish them. Throw the wrong-sized lure and you don't.

Window: late September through mid-November. Some years it's a quick three-week window; others it stretches for two months.

Long, slender, silver-bodied fish, 3 to 6 inches. They bury into sandy bottoms and emerge in dense flickering clouds when the tide turns. Critical late-fall and winter forage for striped bass.

If the November bite turns slow on bunker, it's almost always because the bass have keyed on sand eels and you need to switch presentations. Slim lures, fast retrieves, vertical jigging — match the slim profile.

The Montauk Point rips hold sand eels through the cold months. Boats jigging the rips in December are usually fishing sand eel imitations.

Small, slim, silver-flanked fish 2 to 4 inches long, living in massive schools through the back bays and harbors. The base of the inshore food chain.

Anywhere you find small fish chasing smaller fish — snapper blues marauding in Three Mile Harbor, weakfish in the back bays, schoolie bass on the flats — spearing are what they're eating. Year-round, but easiest to catch with a small minnow net in summer.

The most versatile bait on the East End. Schools move inshore in spring and stay through fall. Mostly fished cut into strips for fluke, but live squid is gold for bigger bass and the occasional cow striper that won't eat anything else.

You can buy them fresh at any bait shop. Boat anglers offshore at night light up squid jigs to fill the livewell for the next morning's fluke trip.

The night surfcaster's bait. Tough, lively, and irresistible to big bass after dark. The eel that gets a 40-pound cow striper to crush a topwater is the same fish that nightcrawlers chase for cocktails in summer.

Bought live from any tackle shop. Tougher than you'd think — a single eel can produce multiple fish in a night if it survives the first strike.

An invasive Eurasian crab that has become the #1 blackfish bait on the East End. The tog crew lives on green crabs from October through December.

Hard-shell, dark green to brown, 2 to 3 inches across. Cut in half and hooked through a leg socket — that's the standard tog presentation.

The native estuary crab — bigger and more aggressive than green crabs, with the famous blue claws. Small ones live in the back bays around Springs and Three Mile Harbor.

For bait fishing, soft-shells (just-molted blue claws) are the prize. Striped bass and weakfish find them irresistible in summer. Larger fluke have been known to eat them whole.

The premium fishing worm of the Northeast. Bright pink-red, fleshy, and (literally) full of blood that releases scent into the water. Porgies, weakfish, and panfish go crazy for them.

Tough on the hands — they bite, and the bite stings. Sold by the dozen at any bait shop. Pricey but worth it when porgies are running.

The bloodworm's working-class cousin. Cheaper, more abundant, slightly less productive — but still a deadly bait for the same fish.

Long, segmented, brownish-green with a row of pinkish feathers along each side. Live in tidal mudflats and sandy beaches around the East End.

Tough little marsh minnows, 2 to 4 inches, that survive brackish water, tide swings, and the occasional freeze. Will live in a bucket of warm bait shop water for days, which is exactly why they became the standard fluke bait.

The killie-and-squid combination on a 2-hook fluke rig is older than most anglers on the boat. Still catches more fluke than 90 percent of newer techniques.

Tiny, 2 to 3 inches, silver and translucent. Move through East End waters in late summer in massive clouds. The single most important baitfish for the false albacore run that hits Montauk in September.

You won't fish bay anchovies as bait — they're too small. But knowing they're around tells you what's happening: when albies are crashing them at the surface, throw small metals, tiny epoxy jigs, or Albie Snax.

Surf-fishing classic. Skimmer clams (sometimes called "surf clams") are the big oceanside shellfish that gets ground up and used as chum or hooked whole as bait.

Bigger striped bass in spring will pick up a clam bait readily. Porgies and sea bass eat them year-round. Salted clam tongues are a sneaky blackfish bait that some old-timers still swear by.

A tougher cousin of the killie. Sheepshead minnows live in saltmarsh tidal creeks and shallow ponds where salinity and water temperature swing wildly through the day. They handle conditions that would kill most fish, which is exactly why they end up in bait buckets next to killies.

One and a half to three inches long, deep-bodied for a minnow, with strong vertical bars on the sides. Caught with seine nets in the marsh creeks of Accabonac and Three Mile Harbor.

Used like killies on a bottom rig for fluke, especially in shallow back-bay drifts. Snappers and small weakfish will hit them too.

The fall mullet run is one of the East End's most reliable bass triggers — second only to the peanut bunker push. White mullet is the more common species here; striped mullet shows up some years too. Slender silver fish with a small mouth and a forked tail.

Schools move down the beach in September and October, sometimes in lines a quarter-mile long. Bass and blues track them, and the run can light up the surf when conditions align. The "mullet bottle" plug exists for exactly this scenario.

Bigger mullet (8–12 inches) make exceptional live baits for trophy bass. Smaller ones go on a snap-jig under a popper float.

Tiny burrowing crabs that live in the wave wash on every East End ocean beach. The name "sand flea" is a misnomer — they're proper decapod crustaceans, just small. Dig them out of the wet sand at low tide where the wash recedes.

About half-inch to an inch and a half, hard tan carapace, feathery feeding antennae. Females carrying bright orange eggs are the premium bait when you can find them.

Pompano gold further south. On the East End they're sneaky-good for porgies, surf bass, and sea bass — anywhere fish are working a sandy bottom near the wash zone.

Atlantic mackerel are a spring and fall visitor to East End waters — schools move through during migration to and from northern grounds. Show up offshore first, then push closer as bait builds inshore.

Sleek torpedo-shaped fish, 10 to 16 inches, with wavy dark green markings on the back and a sharp silver belly. Excellent table fare if you ice them fast.

For bait fishermen, mackerel are tuna and shark candy. A live mackerel slow-trolled offshore is the classic Montauk bluefin setup. Chunked or whole for bass, blues, and anything toothy. Light-tackle jigging schools of them is its own fun.

The old-timer's blackfish bait. Hermit crabs live in abandoned whelk and moon snail shells in the rocks and shell debris around East End jetties and reefs. Collect them by walking the wash at low tide and grabbing the right-sized shells.

Removed from the shell, hooked through the body, hermit crabs work like green crabs but with a subtle scent profile that sometimes triggers picky togs when green crabs are getting refused. Most bait shops don't carry them — this is a do-it-yourself bait.

The crew that fishes the back side of Block Island and the East End reefs in late fall still swears by them.

Tiny translucent shrimp that live in eelgrass meadows in Peconic Bay and the back creeks of Three Mile Harbor and Accabonac. Half-inch to an inch and a half, almost invisible in the water.

Weakfish anglers catch a bucket with a fine-mesh seine in late spring and use them for the next week. When weakfish were a thing on the East End, grass shrimp were the bait of choice. They've made a slow comeback some years and the shrimp bite still works.

Also sneaky-good for snapper blues, porgies, and schoolie bass in the back bays.

The newer invasive on East End rocks — arrived from Asia in the late 1980s, now everywhere. Smaller than green crabs at one to two inches across, more aggressive, and faster-spreading. The native crab population around the jetties has shifted as these have taken over.

For tog fishermen, they've become an alternate bait — easier to collect than green crabs in some spots, similar effectiveness on smaller togs. Hook them whole or halved like you would a green crab.

Most days the togs don't care which crab it is. Have both in the bait bucket and switch when the bite slows.

The spring spawning runs bring herring and hickory shad into East End creek systems each year. River herring (alewives Alosa pseudoharengus and blueback herring A. aestivalis) and hickory shad (A. mediocris) push from the ocean into freshwater creeks from April through June.

These runs feed the early-spring striper push hard. The first big bass in the rivers and creek mouths are eating herring almost exclusively.

Important: river herring are protected in NY — taking them is illegal without specific permits. Hickory shad have separate rules. For most anglers, herring is for imitation, not capture. Always verify regs with NY DEC before keeping any Alosa.