Thursday, May 21, 2020

Holiday Weekend Outlook: Fish Around BUT Parking Problems

It's been mostly small ones this week
for me with an occasional decent fish
from shore.
My son Jon has been scoring
better size fish from the
kayak.  This 30 incher was
landed this morning.
The real hot fishing that I had been experiencing along the south shore has really cooled off. I have been fishing the Bay in recent evenings and doing ok with small fish.  No big numbers but there are fish around. Jigheads with Zoom flukes have been scoring the best. My son, Jon, has been fishing from the kayak and doing a lot of paddling, but he's also finding good numbers of good size schoolies with occassional keepers in the mix up to 30 inches. He's also gotten the first blue in the family, a chopper about 6 lbs. All his fish have come on topwater plugs with the Rebel Jumpin Minnow being the best plug of the week. There have been a few bluefish around both the oceanfront and the Bay but no big numbers.
Parking remains a major issue along the oceanfront and along the Bay. Much of it is still closed down, and it has even gotten a bit worse with South Kingstown Beach closing down this week because of over crowding. Many of the fishermen I know who are fishiing from shore are either parking illegally or walking long distances to get to the water. The few places that are open are seeing a lot of fishermen. You may have heard that some places are opening up, but many of those places are shut down and locked at dusk. Not good since many of the shore fish are hitting at and after dark.
So, your best bet at catching a striper or a blue this weekend would be from a boat or a kayak. Boaters can get access to a lot of water.  In addition, worms are hatching in many of the south shore ponds and places in the Bay. That worm hatch is generally a boating/kayaking thing. I've also seen schools of big pogies in the Bay.  My guess is that many boaters will be looking for these and bigger fish this weekend.