Females can produce 900,000 to 4,500,000 eggs. The distribution of bluefish eggs is related to temperature and salinity and can vary from year to year. Bluefish larvae can be found offshore between Cape Cod, Massachusetts and Palm Beach, Florida, during every season of the year. After the spring spawn, bluefish move shoreward. The smaller fish generally enter the Chesapeake Bay while the larger fish head farther north.
Larval distribution is affected by the wind and currents.
Larvae that originate from spawning off the Chesapeake Bay are carried south and offshore. As larvae grow and are able to swim, they leave the surface for deeper water and move inshore. In the early autumn, bluefish begin to migrate out of the Bay and move south along the coast. Peak abundance near the Bay mouth occurs from April to July and again in October and November. Commercial landings from the Bay were generally high during the 1930s, modest to poor from the 1940s through the 1960s and again high from the early 1970s through the mid-1980s.