Where are the Bigger Fish?

Nowhere to be found.  It's been a fall with loads of small stripers, but the bigger ones, the keepers, are few and far between.  It's even worse with bluefish.  Plain and simple, there are just about none.

Another schoolie comes onto the beach.
They seemed to be all over the south shore
today.  A Cocahoe minnow on a jighead
proved to be my hot lure.

Hopes were high this fall as we all heard about the record numbers of big stripers just to our north in the Cape Cod Canal.  Many were hoping those fish would hug the shoreline on their migration southward, and that would set up some big time fishing here in RI. It doesn't look like that is happening.
The bait situation has also been strange.  I know there were tons of big menhaden in Narragansett Bay this spring and summer.  They usually attract large keeper stripers and big blues.  Yet, in all my times down the RI oceanfront this fall, I have not seen a single large pogy. Heck, I haven't even seen that much peanut bunker yet. I'm also hoping an ocean herring migration will materialize.  I saw positive signs today as I saw gannets dive bombing about a quarter mile off the beaches, sometimes a sign of herring around. The herring usually have some big fish on their tails.  They tend to come around in mid November if they do appear.
I fished the sands of the south shore beachfront today.  There seemed to be those 12 to 20 inch schoolies all over the place.  Some places had more than others.  If you tossed a Cocahoe on a jighead or a bucktail jig, you most likely would catch a schoolie along one of the beaches.
But, everyone  I talked to today had the same question, "Where are the bigger fish?"