Monday, May 2, 2016

Best April in DECADES

Action from the boat has been
good.  Mike Pickering hoists
a hefty schoolie landed
this weekend.
This good size one
was landed tonight
on a Zoom fluke. The
hot action has
continued into May.
Personally, this was my best April in decades.  There may have been a better start back 30 or 40 years ago, but I can't remember anything better.
I started catching on April 11 and from that date to the end of the month it was almost non-stop action in all the spots I fished.  I can't tell you what the guys along the far south beaches of Westerly were doing or what those along Newport or Jamestown were doing, but I can say that in the spots that I fish it was outstanding.  In three glorious weeks, I have landed just about as many stripers as I caught ALL last year.
What also made this April so unusual was the fact that all sizes were abundant.  I landed a lot of small ones under 16 inches in the early going, and then I started getting bigger schoolies and lots of them in the 16-26 inch range.  And, recently it has been a lot of keepers in the 28-34 inch range. The only thing I didn't get is a real large fish, but I have never gotten a real big one in April.
The fishing shows no sign of slowing down as I continue to score good numbers in these first couple of days of May.
While many out there were predicting gloom and doom for 2016 with decreasing numbers of fish, it has been just the opposite. We have them, and lots and lots of them so far. Hopefully this trend will continue.