Emilio (Amin) Pandolfi and I spent five hours scouting both sides of the Sound today. We started out around the Norwalk Islands, where we found schoolie striped bass which we brought in on bucktail and artificial sand worms. We then moved toward deeper water, looking for baitfish around structures, but we found nothing, although there have been reports of some schools of bunker in our area. We then moved across the Sound towards Long Island, and worked the Northport power plant area, again with no success. We moved further east, and off of Sunken Meadow we spotted a few birds working the surface. We casted into the vicinity of the action and came up with striped bass up to 22". We also hooked an 18" fluke. Our next move was into mid-Sound to see if there were any bluefish around. We blindcasted into 60-70 feet of water, using surface poppers, and brought in blues 6-9 pounds, which was great to see. All the fish caught today were released. While we were traveling we found some small baitfish, which was an encouraging sign. Water temps are between 54-56°, which is about 10 degrees higher than what they were last week. We've had reports of action heating up west of us--in City Island and Hempstead Harbor--and the fish should start moving into our neighborhood in the next couple of weeks.