November Starts with Bass on the Mind

Sunday, November 1, 2026

The clocks have fallen back, but there’s no need to put the fishing gear away with them. November opens with a light-wind forecast and some encouraging late-week striped bass news around Seaside Park. This is a Sunday planning update: the latest verified catch reports below are dated, rather than a promise about what’s biting this morning.

Starting at Bayonne and New York Harbor, fresh catch details are limited. Bayonne Bait and Tackle’s latest accessible dated report is October 26, so it’s too old to use as today’s fishing picture. Check current bait availability before heading over. Today’s harbor forecast calls for northwest winds around 5 knots, becoming southwest in the afternoon, with waves of 1 foot or less.

Around Raritan Bay, Sandy Hook and the Monmouth County shoreline, the October 29 regional update favored boat anglers fishing live bunker, with surf catches more often coming after dark. Treat that as late-week background, not confirmation that a particular beach is producing today. A bait pod still needs fish underneath it; November hasn’t agreed to do all the work for us.

For the Sandy Hook-to-Manasquan coastal zone, today’s forecast is north winds of 5–10 knots, becoming southwest late, with seas around 2 feet. Those are coastal-zone predictions, not a measurement of the breakers at your beach or conditions at a kayak launch.

Farther south, Grumpys Tackle’s October 30 update gives Seaside Park and the Island Beach area an encouraging starting point. The shop reported large striped bass locally, with bunker chunks, live eels, jointed gliders and swim shads among the offerings producing fish. It also described good blackfish action around local rock piles and bay structure. Those are Friday’s reports; today’s tide gets a fresh vote.

Betty & Nick’s October 30 beach update adds some bass and small bluefish to the recent picture. Its clean-water and roughly one-foot shoreline-wave observations were from Friday, so don’t assume the same water clarity or surf today. No fresh kayak-specific catches were verified for this update.

For the coastal waters off Island Beach, today’s forecast calls for north winds of 5–10 knots, becoming east late, with seas around 2 feet. Give your actual launch and the inlet their own assessment before committing to a boat or kayak outing.

Here’s the tide-clock part, with daytime and evening times in Eastern Standard Time. At Sandy Hook, today’s predicted high is 12:43 p.m., followed by low water at 7:27 p.m. At Barnegat Inlet, inside, high water is 12:30 p.m. and low water is 7:32 p.m. These are station-specific water-level predictions; they don’t give an exact slack-current time, and back-bay spots can run on a different schedule.

Bring a few dependable offerings, keep an eye on the water and leave room for a change of plan. The calendar says November. The fish still insist on making their own appointments.