Catching Bluefish from shore

I have never fished for bluefish before, I have a 8ft spinning reel/rod and fish from ct river to guilford harbor. I was curious if the bluefish are close enough to shore to catch yet and what the best bait or lure is to catch them. Also what time of day is best, is it better to go in morning or at night or does go with incoming/outgoing tide regardless of time of day?

Any help would be appreciated, I am excited to try and catch my first bluefish!

You can fish the state beaches, off the DEP Pier at the mouth of the CT River, as well as a few other access points. CT has 230ish miles of coastline of which 5 is accessible to the public. Browse through the salt water postings for topics cover specific areas to give you some ideas. Places like Meigs Point in Hammonasset are easily accessible and you didn't have to pay at night to get in. Don't know if this is still the case. Tides are going to vary by location. Many of the points can be good on either tide, as fish will wait in the eddies of the tips to ambush prey, or push and trap large schools of bait against the structures. I usually go armed with a rod for chunking (bunker) or soaking eels, and one for casting plugs. Blues will run in big schools chasing bait all day, sometimes creating the beach "blitzes" that every surf caster loves. At night they will also roam, and chunking is effective. My best advice is to read up, follow a bunch threads here and on other sites for local info, and get out there! Just remember, it's fishing and not always catching. The number of blues will keep increasing as the summer goes on. Not a lot beats sitting out on a point at night with a few friends throwing plugs or soaking eels, having a few beverages, and bullsh*ting about the fish you've lost or caught! Good Luck!

Fished from shore in Guilford this am into LIS, was there before sunrise and fished until just after 9am, there was plenty of bait around and a good amount of bird action, tried bottom rig with bunker and squid, no bites, tried surface plugs, poppers, and some spoons, and an atom absolutely nothing, not even a bite....

I'm sure the blues would have been thrilled to have been poundin that bait too. LIS is a big pond, and fishing from shore is a time and place thing. Stay on it....you'll time it right eventually. Were you by the town dock or one of the coves?

We were in one of the coves....is one better than the other?

Not really. It matters where the fish are. I like Indian Cove cause it's pretty open to LIS, and I know people on mulberry point rd. Need highish tide though to shore fish there. Great clamming there too. Shouldnt you be scrubbing teak in your off time? My buddy has a baltic and thats all he does all summer. lol

I finally caught a fluke and a schoolie bass at the mouth of the CT river, there was a lot of schoolies caught and a couple flukes, one keeper fluke....still no blues though although i heard reports of 30inch blues being caught at mouth of river on sunday near high tide

So far I've found that I've really hammered the blues on incoming tides when it's really moving,the more current the better.

I finally caught my first bluefish! It was almost a 25incher and man did it fight! It peeled off tons of line before I could even react and it went on several runs, finally landed it.

Anyone have any good bluefish recipes, i found one recipe to grill it, i am going to try that today, but other recipes would be great!