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Home › Waters › New Jersey › Little Egg Inlet
Estuary · Ocean and Atlantic county coast between Long Beach Island and Brigantine, the inlet draining Great Bay and the Mullica River · New Jersey

Little Egg Inlet Fishing Guides

An undeveloped natural inlet draining Great Bay and the Mullica, fished for stripers, fluke and drum against some of the wildest marsh on the Jersey coast.

A dock reaching out over wide brackish water at dusk
Gauge location. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Guides on the Little Egg Inlet

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About the Little Egg Inlet

Little Egg Inlet is the gap between the south end of Long Beach Island and Brigantine, and it drains one of the least developed estuaries left on the Atlantic seaboard. Behind it lie Great Bay, the Mullica River and thousands of acres of salt marsh inside the Edwin B. Forsythe refuge and the Jacques Cousteau research reserve. There are no bulkheads, no marina district and almost no houses on the bay side of the inlet, which makes it a striking piece of water to fish and a genuinely demanding one to navigate. The channel migrates, the shoals move between seasons, and local knowledge counts for more here than at any other inlet in the state.

What the wildness buys is fish. The Mullica system brings real freshwater flow into the back of the bay, so the estuary runs a full salinity gradient and holds a wider range of species than the hardened bays to the north. Striped bass stage in the inlet on both runs and hold along the sod banks and rips inside it. Summer flounder use the inlet channel and the shoals on either side and are the summer mainstay. Black drum and red drum turn up in the back bay in the warm months, weakfish move through on their own schedule, and blackfish and sea bass work the hard bottom near the mouth. Guides run from Tuckerton, Great Bay Boulevard and the Mystic Island ramps, mostly light tackle and fly.

The gauge near Tuckerton publishes tidal elevation and water temperature. The tide is the thing to plan around, because the inlet runs hard on a big outgoing tide against an onshore wind and turns genuinely dangerous in a small boat. The temperature trace is the honest guide to when the drum and weakfish will show and when the fall run is actually underway.

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  • Withdrawing is one email to hello@guidedfloats.com naming the photo. It comes off the site within 7 days.
Read the full license

Version 1.0, dated 6 September 2026. Applies to every photograph submitted to GuidedFloats through the contact form, a species page, or the community board.

1. What you give us

By ticking the box on the form you grant Guided Floats, LLC (“GuidedFloats”, “we”) a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, copy, resize, crop and display your photograph on guidedfloats.com, in GuidedFloats’ own social media accounts and mobile apps, and in material that promotes the site itself, in connection with the fish, water or community feature you sent it in for. The license lasts until you withdraw it (section 4).

You keep the copyright. The license is not exclusive, so you can use the photo anywhere else and license it to anyone else. We will not sell your photo, license it on to anyone else on its own, or use it in paid advertising for a third party.

2. What you confirm

You confirm that you took the photograph yourself (or otherwise own the rights to it), that you have the right to grant this license, and that publishing the photo does not infringe anyone else’s copyright, privacy or other rights.

If any person is recognisable in the photo, you confirm that they have agreed to its being published here, and that a parent or guardian has agreed on behalf of anyone under 18. Please do not send photographs of other people’s catches, screenshots, or pictures copied from other websites or social media.

3. Credit

We print the credit name you give us beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, and record it as the photo’s creator in the page’s structured data. If you leave the credit blank we use the name you gave us on the form. Write “Anonymous” if you prefer no name at all. Your email address, phone number and the exact spot the photo was taken are never published.

4. Withdrawing the license

You can withdraw the license at any time by emailing hello@guidedfloats.com, or by using the contact form, and telling us which photo you mean. We will remove the photo from guidedfloats.com within 7 days of receiving your message and stop using it in anything new. Copies that are already outside our control — search-engine caches, social posts that have already gone out, printed material already produced — may take longer to disappear or may not be recallable, and we are not responsible for those.

5. What we may do

We choose which photos to publish and may decline any submission without giving a reason. We may crop, resize, sharpen or colour-correct a photo for display, and we may remove a photo at any time. We will not alter a photo in a way that misrepresents the fish, the water or you.

6. Your details

We keep your name, email address, the credit name, the water and date you gave us, and the network address the submission came from, with the submission record, as our evidence of this license. We hold that record for as long as the photo is published and for the retention period described in our privacy policy. Location data that your camera or phone embedded in the file is removed before the photo is published.

7. Versions

The version of this license you accepted is stored with your submission and printed with the photo. A later version does not apply to a photo you have already sent unless you agree to it.

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Reviewed by hand before it appears. Pick the water, not the spot — we never publish exact locations.

Never published. We use it only if we need to ask about the photo.

Posting to Little Egg Inlet.

JPG, PNG or WebP, up to 12 MB. We resize it and strip the location data out of the file.

The name shown under the photo. Leave blank to stay anonymous.

Reader photo license v1.0 — the short version:

  • You grant Guided Floats, LLC a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to publish, resize and crop your photo on guidedfloats.com and in GuidedFloats’ own social posts and apps. You keep the copyright and can use the photo anywhere else.
  • You confirm that you took the photo yourself, that publishing it does not infringe anyone else’s rights, and that anyone recognisable in it (or a parent or guardian, if they are under 18) is happy for it to appear here.
  • Credit is printed beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, using the credit name you give us. Leave it blank and we use your name; write “Anonymous” for no name. Your email address is never published.
  • Withdrawing is one email to hello@guidedfloats.com naming the photo. It comes off the site within 7 days.
Read the full license

Version 1.0, dated 6 September 2026. Applies to every photograph submitted to GuidedFloats through the contact form, a species page, or the community board.

1. What you give us

By ticking the box on the form you grant Guided Floats, LLC (“GuidedFloats”, “we”) a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, copy, resize, crop and display your photograph on guidedfloats.com, in GuidedFloats’ own social media accounts and mobile apps, and in material that promotes the site itself, in connection with the fish, water or community feature you sent it in for. The license lasts until you withdraw it (section 4).

You keep the copyright. The license is not exclusive, so you can use the photo anywhere else and license it to anyone else. We will not sell your photo, license it on to anyone else on its own, or use it in paid advertising for a third party.

2. What you confirm

You confirm that you took the photograph yourself (or otherwise own the rights to it), that you have the right to grant this license, and that publishing the photo does not infringe anyone else’s copyright, privacy or other rights.

If any person is recognisable in the photo, you confirm that they have agreed to its being published here, and that a parent or guardian has agreed on behalf of anyone under 18. Please do not send photographs of other people’s catches, screenshots, or pictures copied from other websites or social media.

3. Credit

We print the credit name you give us beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, and record it as the photo’s creator in the page’s structured data. If you leave the credit blank we use the name you gave us on the form. Write “Anonymous” if you prefer no name at all. Your email address, phone number and the exact spot the photo was taken are never published.

4. Withdrawing the license

You can withdraw the license at any time by emailing hello@guidedfloats.com, or by using the contact form, and telling us which photo you mean. We will remove the photo from guidedfloats.com within 7 days of receiving your message and stop using it in anything new. Copies that are already outside our control — search-engine caches, social posts that have already gone out, printed material already produced — may take longer to disappear or may not be recallable, and we are not responsible for those.

5. What we may do

We choose which photos to publish and may decline any submission without giving a reason. We may crop, resize, sharpen or colour-correct a photo for display, and we may remove a photo at any time. We will not alter a photo in a way that misrepresents the fish, the water or you.

6. Your details

We keep your name, email address, the credit name, the water and date you gave us, and the network address the submission came from, with the submission record, as our evidence of this license. We hold that record for as long as the photo is published and for the retention period described in our privacy policy. Location data that your camera or phone embedded in the file is removed before the photo is published.

7. Versions

The version of this license you accepted is stored with your submission and printed with the photo. A later version does not apply to a photo you have already sent unless you agree to it.

Access

Great Bay Boulevard ramps near Tuckerton - the closest public launches to the inlet.
Mystic Island boat ramp - a sheltered launch onto the back bay.
Great Bay Boulevard WMA pullouts - marsh-edge walk-in fishing and crabbing.
Holgate at the south end of Long Beach Island - beach and shore access to the north side of the inlet.
Brigantine north end - shore access to the south side of the inlet.
Mullica River ramps at Lower Bank - upper-estuary access for the freshwater gradient.
Graveling Point at the head of Great Bay - a well-known spring striper shore spot.

Seasons

Spring: the first striped bass push in and drum begin to show in the back bay as it warms.
Summer: flounder in the channel and on the shoals, crabbing in the marsh, and blues in the mouth.
Fall: the strongest month, with bass and blues staging in the inlet on the run south.
Winter: mostly shut down, with cold water and only sporadic blackfish near the mouth.

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Questions

What species can you catch on the Little Egg Inlet?

Anglers target Atlantic Croaker, Black Drum, Black Sea Bass, Blue Crab, Bluefish, Northern Kingfish, Red Drum, Striped Bass, Summer Flounder, Tautog, Weakfish on the Little Egg Inlet in New Jersey.

Where can you access the Little Egg Inlet?

Great Bay Boulevard ramps near Tuckerton - the closest public launches to the inlet. Mystic Island boat ramp - a sheltered launch onto the back bay. Great Bay Boulevard WMA pullouts - marsh-edge walk-in fishing and crabbing. Holgate at the south end of Long Beach Island - beach and shore access to the north side of the inlet. Brigantine north end - shore access to the south side of the inlet. Mullica River ramps at Lower Bank - upper-estuary access for the freshwater gradient. Graveling Point at the head of Great Bay - a well-known spring striper shore spot.

When is the best time to fish the Little Egg Inlet?

Spring: the first striped bass push in and drum begin to show in the back bay as it warms. Summer: flounder in the channel and on the shoals, crabbing in the marsh, and blues in the mouth. Fall: the strongest month, with bass and blues staging in the inlet on the run south. Winter: mostly shut down, with cold water and only sporadic blackfish near the mouth.

Where are the fishing regulations for the Little Egg Inlet?

Regulations change by season and section. Read the current rules on the New Jersey agency site: https://dep.nj.gov/njfw/fishing/marine/