I'm sure a lot of fishermen are looking forward to the holiday weekend and will take the opportunity to do some fishing. Here's the outlook the way I see it.Contrary to a lot of reports, striper fishing is really a hit or miss type of deal. I think it should be better. The number of schoolies has declined in recent weeks as they always do around this time. Keepers are no sure bet and will take a lot of effort to find them from boat or shore. I was out earlier in the week in the Bay and could only find a few blues. There seems to be a few blues around in a number of locations but no big numbers. I kept moving around and I found decent numbers of schoolies from shore the last two evenings. Last night I landed 16 schoolies on bucktail jigs from a Bay location. However, I will tell you that I know a lot of good fishermen who are blanking and complaining about the sudden lack of fish. Boaters in the Bay could find a school of pogies that might have big fish under them, but weather will not be in their favor this weekend. I suspect the weather will also put a damper on fishing along the oceanfront. You have a better shot at catching a keeper there if you fish at night or in the early morning or evening.
If you really want to catch something to eat (scup and black sea bass), nearby Buzzards Bay is the place to be if you fish from a boat. I saw boaters there this week just hammering large scup along with good numbers of keeper black sea bass. In some places the bottom seemed to be paved with them. There are also big schools of bluefish roaming this Bay chasing schools of small sandeels. Nothing close to this exists in RI waters right now.Finally, freshwater is also a terrific bet right now. My son, Jon, and I got out largemouth bass fishing this week at a local pond and we landed good numbers of them on plastic worms. I have also been out carp fishing a lot in the last two weeks and have gotten phenomenal numbers of large fish. I had two fish in the thirties (pounds!) and 10 fish in the 20's. I also had countless fish in the teens. If you are interested in how this non-traditional fishing is done, check out my carp fishing blog at www.ricarpfishing.blogspot.com
