Rockaway Inlet Fishing Guides

About the Rockaway Inlet

Rockaway Inlet is the only opening between Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic, which makes it one of the most concentrated pieces of fishing water on the eastern seaboard. Everything that uses the bay has to come through here, and the volume of water moving on a big tide through a narrow gap produces the kind of structure that gamefish organise themselves around: standing rips at the bridge piers, deep scoured holes on the channel edges, and a long sand flat on the Breezy Point side that floods and drains hard. The gauge near Floyd Bennett Field records the tidal elevation that governs all of it, which is the single most useful number for anyone planning a session here.

Striped bass are the headline fish and are present in numbers from April into December, holding in the rips on the moving tide and spreading onto the flats at the top of the water. Bluefish arrive in early summer and will tear through anything in the channel. Summer flounder work the sand on the ebb, winter flounder still show in the colder months in better numbers than their regional reputation suggests, and tautog and black sea bass hold tight to the bridge structure and the rock. False albacore run the mouth in late summer when the bait is right. Weakfish and northern kingfish fill out a species list that is genuinely long for a piece of water inside a city of eight million people.

The gauge reports tidal elevation rather than temperature or discharge, and on an inlet that is the correct instrument. The timing and amplitude of the tide is what decides where the fish will be and when: the fishing is a tide fishery first and a season fishery second, and the strongest windows are the two or three hours either side of a big moving water. Read the elevation trace, work out when the push or the drain will be hardest, and plan around that rather than around the clock. Boat access is straightforward and shore access is unusually good for a major city.

Access

Floyd Bennett Field - the gauge location and the main shore and launch access on the Brooklyn side.
Breezy Point - the western tip of the Rockaway peninsula, with surf and inlet access on the ocean side.
Marine Parkway Bridge - the structure that creates the main rips and the most reliable striper water in the inlet.
Sheepshead Bay - the historic party and charter boat basin and the easiest place to find a captain.
Plumb Beach - a sheltered flat on the Brooklyn shore that fishes well on the flood.
Jamaica Bay - the large estuary inside the inlet, the nursery that feeds the fishery.
Rockaway Beach - the ocean beach east of the inlet, the obvious alternative on a slack tide.

Seasons

Spring: striped bass push through the inlet from April, with winter flounder still available early and the first bluefish arriving late in the season.
Summer: bluefish and summer flounder dominate, with stripers holding to the night tides and false albacore possible from August.
Fall: the peak of the year, with bass and bluefish feeding hard on outgoing bait and albacore and bonito in the mouth on the right day.
Winter: thin but not empty, with a few holdover bass and tautog on the structure for anglers willing to fish cold moving water.