Top 5 Lures for September

Here's my list of the top 5 lures (in no particular order) for striper fishing along the RI shoreline in Sept.:

1. Bucktail jig- Get a lot of sizes, styles and plastic grub tails. Fish the small ones off a float in rough water, fish the big ones along the bottom. They will all catch fish in Sept., especially when bay anchovies are around. My top choice is a flat head or lima bean shape. I especially like to use Bass Pro triple ripple tails in a white color.

2. Needlefish plug- Far better choice than a popper if you want to fish topwater. It has that subtle dart to it and works well in the daytime and at night. I like the lighter colors, even at night. My homemade 5 1/2 inch fat needlefish (all white/yellow back) is my favorite.

3. Skinny plastic- Whether you opt for the Hogy or the Slug-Go, these are very hot to lure large fish, especially after dark in a place with a wind at your back. I like the extremes in color, either a black or white. My favorites are the nine inch skinny Hogys rigged with the Hogy swimbait hook and fished near the surface.

4. Teasers- I like a black Deceiver teaser used as a teaser and tied ahead of my main plug. I tie my own Deceivers on a size #5/0 hook. When the fish are feeding on small sandeels, these are deadly and the stripers will often hit these over a larger plug. Many fishermen opt for the old plastic, Red Gill teaser, also effective.

5. Swimmers- I especially like to use the 6-inch Bombers in either a pearl or a silver with a black back when fishing shallow water at night. The pearl color is deadly when mullet are around in late September. Other brands of swimmers work equally well as do the wooden Danny-type swimmers.

When Will the Fishing Light Up?

Many will tell you this is the very worst year of fishing for stripers and bluefish along the RI mainland shore in a very long time. I have to agree. Will it perk up? If so, when will it begin to happen?

It began to perk up last year around the beginning of Sept. with a mix of stripers, bluefish and false albacore around. That was all lured close to shore by large schools of bay anchovies (see pic at right). But, not this year. Back luck for us this year that we had the huge waves from Hurricane Earl last weekend and then very strong southwest winds afterward that dirtied the water with sand and weeds. Last year also saw a big second wave in the numbers of stripers and bluefish along the oceanfront around mid September (see photo at left of last year's fishing). Once again, there were large numbers of bay anchovies around and that perked up the fishing. I am hopeful that will again this year if this bait arrives. We also need some cool weather to drop the water temperatures which are running way above normal due to this record breaking heat which has persisted into September. Watch for a string of several cool nights into the low fifties to perk things up. Better yet, hope for a northeaster. That always perks perks up the fishing at this time of year.

There are no sure bets here, but I have never seen a year without a decent fall run here in RI. With lots of fish to our north in the Cape Cod Canal area, along the outer Cape, and around the islands expect those fish to move through RI eventually. I'm confident it will happen.

Seminar at RISAA Meeting

My next seminar will be at the monthly RISAA meeting on Monday, August 30 at 7:00. The Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association (RISAA) meets monthly at the West Valley Inn in West Warwick. Information about the club, directions and upcoming events can be found at their website at http://www.risaa.org/

My seminar is called Breachway Strategies. It will be a Power Point show that will take an in depth look at how to fish the five breachways or outflows along the south shore. These include Narrow River, the Galilee Channel, and Charlestown, Quonny and Weekapaug Breachways. These are some of the hottest spots to catch big stripers and bluefish from shore in the fall. See the pic at right of a fish I caught two years ago in one of the breachways.

Club members attend the seminar for free, but the public can also attend for a fee. Hope to see you there.

Sebile Magic Swimmers

I saw the pricey Sebile lures at the shows last winter, but I have never seen a shore fisherman using one in RI. I did, however, see plenty of them being used at the Cape Cod Canal this summer. These were the hottest plugs to use at the Big Ditch and at least half of the crowd that fished this place daily were using them and catching keepers at an astounding rate.

The hottest plug in this series is the Magic Swimmer 165, a lipless swimmer that is put together in three sections (see photo at left ). This slow sinking plug wiggles like a snake just below the surface on the retrieve. It measures 6 1/2 in. long and weighs 1 1/2 oz. The hot color in the canal was all white though the blue and green back models were also catching.

The plug is pricey, generally around 25 bucks, but I found them online at http://www.thehookuptackle.com/ for twenty dollars with free shipping on orders over $50. I bought a few. I suspect they will be hot in the fall in RI when mullet or large menhaden show up.

Lack of Big Bait=Lack of Big Bass

We are having a poor year along the RI mainland shore for large stripers. By contrast, it has been a banner year in the Cape Cod Canal. The difference between the two areas is that they have the big bait (herring and mackerel) and we have NOTHING at this point.

If large numbers of mackerel or big menhaden suddenly appeared along the shoreline, things would light up just as they do in the fall when mullet are around. This is not likely to happen. The macs have been gone from our area for years and the large menhaden are wiped out of the Bay by the netters by July. In fact, menhaden all along the East Coast are in trouble with low numbers of fish and the large breeding fish over 1 year old at an all time low. That probably explains why we no longer have peanut bunker. There is an excellent article outlining the menhaden problem in this month's RISAA newsletter that is online at http://www.risaa.org/newsletter/0810/aug2010.pdf

With mackerel gone from our waters, menhaden just about wiped out, and no blueback herring near shore in recent years, mullet have become the most plentiful big bait of the fall. When the mullet come around (mid Sept. to mid Oct.), big fish are around in big numbers.

One more note. Notice the small keeper stripers (28-32 in.) we have had around this year are very skinny (see pic at right). I blame that on a lack of big bait also. By contrast, I saw some real hogs pulled from the Canal this summer.

A Glimmer of Hope?

As most of the serious striper shore fishermen know, we are in the middle of one of the poorest summers on record in mainland RI. Narragansett Bay is especially bad. Since June, the Bay has had little bait, few stripers of any size and even very few bluefish. The water temps. from the mid seventies to even an unheard of eighty degrees have taken their toll. But, there just may be a glimmer of hope.

I took my son, Jon, out fishing for snapper blues the last two days in the upper Bay. This is something he enjoys doing with light tackle. In the last two years there were very few of these baby blues around. This year it is loaded. I was amazed at the numbers. In some spots, they were like heavy rain hitting the surface. They were going crazy for small bait about half an inch long that was also around in huge numbers. Stripers and even blues love to feed on these snappers. This all bodes well for the fall. If we can get some cooler weather and rain to lower that water temperature, I suspect the fishing will come alive just as it did last September. There is a glimmer of hope but I think we still have a good month to wait until things really start happening.

Hot New Kastmaster XL

There are some hot looking new lures out this year from Acme. They are called Kastmaster XL's. They look like a slender version of the time tested and popular Kastmaster. They also look like a terrific imitation of a sandeel or even the slender shaped bay anchovy, our primary baitfish. With a lot of those baitfish around these days, I suspect these will be very effective to fish from both shore and boat for stripers, bluefish, false albacore and bonito from late summer into fall.
The Acme people have been around a long time and they know how to design lures. These Kastmaster XL's come in four sizes, 4 1/2 in. (almost 2 oz.),4 in. (1 1/2 oz.),3 1/2 in. (1 oz.), and 2 3/4 in. (1/2 oz.). They all have that aerodynamic shape and should cast like bullets, even into the wind. They also have that flashy chrome look matched with prismatic tape that should attract a lot of attention.
Looks like a winner to me. They are already packed in my surfbag ready to be used at the first sign of an albie or bonito.
For more information, visit the Acme website at www.acmetackle.com