In the past week, my two sons and I have landed over 200 schoolies. Jon and Ben caught most of their fish in Narragansett. I have taken about half my fish in Gansett and the other half of them in the Upper Bay. We are catching them in the daytime as well as after dark. Most are falling for some type of jig (Cocahoe on jighead or bucktail jig). Meanwhile, other fishermen are calling me to report they are getting schoolies in spots along the mid Bay. Still others are reporting hot action along the far south shore beaches. You can surmise schoolies are just about everywhere that bait exists. And, they are around in huge numbers.
I don't know where all these fish are coming from. Up until this fall it had been a fair to poor year for schoolies. The spring run was short lived and summer fishing was poor. With that young-of-the-year index being low for the last five years, everyone was saying this would be a lean year for schoolies. It has been the complete opposite this fall.
While these schoolies are great fun on light tackle, I would like to tangle with a big fish once in a while. That has not been happening in the last week, a time period that has been good for big fish in the past. Of those 200 stripers we landed in the last week, only one fish was a keeper and that seemed to be an oddball in a pile of schoolies.
