The abundance of Raritan Bay blues that had been making it difficult to get through to stripers has seemed to moderate the last couple of days. Chuck Many of Annandale got out Tuesday afternoon to check his spots in Raritan Bay, and found them to be well-populated with stripers that didn't have to fight off bluefish to get to a live bunker. Unfortunately, those same spots were barren when I joined Many, Nellie Greer of Bethlehem, Pa.  and Kurt Hoefig from Annandale on Ty Man from Gateway Marina in Highlands this morning. When we did mark some bass and tried chunking bunker, we picked three stipers without having to deal with blues. That bite wasn't good enough to hold us there, and Many set up in the mouth of Hudson River where we got lots of hits in a roaring current -- but had to fish through smooth dogfish and some blues in order to pick a few bass. Many had to leave by 1 p.m., by which time we'd released seven bass from a short up to Greer's 23-pounder, several blues up to Hoefig's 16-pound jumbo -- and about a dozen dogfish. Not up to the usual Ty Man standards, but better than the recent problems trying to find bass among too many choppers. Capt. Ron Santee noted slower bluefishing today from his Fishermen out of Atlantic Highlands. Some blues were caught, but the previously hot jigging plus baiting with fresh bunker was picky. Capt. Dave Riback reported a good blast of magic hours stripers on Tuesday from his Queen Mary from Point Pleasant.  The Jamaica from Brielle had good bluefish jigging Tuesday as Nick Venito of Staten Island won the pool with  17-pounder. After finding some school stripers in the Bradley Beach surf on Tuesday, Vinnie D'Anton of Shark River Hills said there wasn't even a hit this morning in a somewhat rougher, but still very fishable surf.