My last post focused in on how poor shore fishing was right now, especially in the upper and mid Bay. The oceanfront, too, is not fishing well from shore for larger fish. I got out last night and landed several small ones, but we are talking very small fish of about 12 inches. I spoke with a couple of guys and they were complaining about the lack of larger fish around.
However, if you check out the boating reports, they are glowing with accounts of large fish. It's true. My brother and son, Ben, were out at Block Island yesterday in Steve's boat with a fleet of other boats. There the keepers are plentiful (see two of them they landed), and there are some real monsters being caught. We're talking a number of 50's and even 60's taken in the last week. Many fishermen are also reporting good catches of large stripers in the mid and lower Bay. Many of these large fish are in deep water and they are falling for bait. Pick your offering....eels, live menhaden, chunks, yo-yoing menhaden, scup, etc. are all getting the job done from the boat.
Most shore guys prefer to plug rather than fish with bait. Those guys are finding the large fish hard to find because they are not close to shore. Many of these fish moved off into deeper water when we had the flooding rains of the last two weeks. You might get lucky, though, and have a school of menhaden hit the shoreline where you are fishing. If you can snag one of these large baitfish, you have a shot at catching something big.
So, there's a big difference right now in catches here in RI. The shore guys are having a tough go of it while the boaters who know what they are doing are hauling up good numbers of big fish.
