Biggest Fish in Years

What started out as a slow day ended with a monster fish.  Tonight I landed a huge striper of 46 inches after dark on this rainy and stormy night.  This fish  was probably my biggest fish in over a decade.  I suspect it was in the 40+ pound range.
The day did not start off well.  I had all the right conditions in Gansett with a stiff northeast wind and rough water, but very few fish.  I was only able to catch one schoolie in the daylight and I tried in a lot of places.  My luck changed after dark as I found a spot that had some schoolies and I quickly landed 5 fish.  Then the big fish blew up on my jointed Red Fin swimmer. It proved to be quite a struggle to land this fish in rough water and the fish pulled out a lot of line from my Van Staal 150 reel.  Fortunately the new VMC trebles I put on the plug recently held, and I got the brute ashore.  A quick measurement with my tape and she was released to fight again.  I have no pictures of the fish since I left the camera in the car figuring I wasn't going to catch anything.  Boy, was I wrong!

Hot Fishing Dies Out

I just knew it was too hot to last.  Last week's phenomenal fishing along Narragansett has faded into a memory.  It has gone from red hot to ice cold within a few days.  I went down yesterday and blanked.  I could not even find a fishermen who caught or saw a fish.  There were no birds diving, no breaking fish and no big schools of bait.  Heck, there weren't even many fishermen around, a bad sign.
My son, Ben, my scout down Gansett way, got out this evening and found nothing (very unusual for him).  Other fishermen I know fished earlier in the day and came up empty.  Clearly things are dead.
With the forecast calling for NE winds the next few days, who knows what will happen.  It's a matter of waiting until the next pile of bait comes along and almost for sure the stripers and blues will be in hot pursuit.

Go SMALL

Some of the biggest blitzes in the history of RI striper fishing have been taking place at Narragansett this week. There seems to be no end to this terrific run.  What is fueling these blitzes are vast schools of bay anchovies that are being driven ashore by hungry stripers, blues and false albacore.
Yet, while there appears to be a million bass in front of you at times, they are tough to catch.  That's because the conditions are calm, the water is clear and the bait is small and plentiful. 
I got a call from my son, Ben, today.  He excitedly told me he landed over 30 stripers (6 keepers) and 10 bluefish in a couple of hours of fishing.  However, none of the twenty or so fishermen around him seemed to be able to catch even one fish.  How did he do it?  He was using a very small freshwater plastic swimmer, casting close to shore and was reeling it in very slowly to keep it near the surface as the fish were on a rampage in only a couple of feet of water.  That small swimmer measured only a few inches and closely resembled the bay anchovies (see photo at right) that the fish were feeding on.  Those other guys who were blanking were probably using large pencil poppers, big wooden swimmers or large metal.  Come on guys, you know the deal is to try to match the hatch.

Bay anchovies are small, anywhere from a half inch to a couple of inches.  When they are around, some good imitators are small swimmers, three inch poppers, three inch Cocahoes (see photo at left), small bucktail jigs and even small Zoom flukes running off a float.  While the guys tossing the big wood and big plastic may get an occasional big fish, their hook up rate is often dismal or non existent when bay anchovies are present.  So, my word of advice right now is Go Small if you are looking to catch some fish.

Fish EVERYWHERE

The last two days have seen some of the biggest striper blitzes in recent years along the Narragansett shoreline.  Today and yesterday there was a mix of stripers, bluefish and false albacore hugging the entire shoreline from Pt. Judith all the way to the Walls around the Harbor of Refuge, a more than five mile stretch.  Vast schools of bay anchovies were along this shoreline and attracting big numbers of predators.  It is some of the best striper fishing I have seen along here in years.  It is also attracting big numbers of fishermen that form a picket fence of casters in some shore spots. Boaters are also chasing these fish just off shore.

I got out in my brother's boat today and fished this shoreline with my brother Steve and my son Ben.  I saw one school of stripers that was roughly the size of a football field, thousands of fish tearing through bay anchoies in a wild surface frenzy.  In another spot, I saw a smaller school of fish, say the size of a basketball court.  We could see thousands of fish right on the surface and under the boat, all around us.  There was not one fish that wasn't a keeper!  They were all big.  In other places, very fussy false albacore were tearing through the bait.  And, still other spots had big blues.  In all, we must have landed over 20 stripers, at least a half dozen big blues and a false albacore in just a few hours of fishing. The hot lure was a fan tailed plastic Cocahoe mounted on a small jighead.
While we were hammering the fish from the boat, my son, Jon, was banging several keeper bass from shore.  It was one heck of a wild day!

Big Bucks Banging Big Fish

I'm on another roll. In the last few days I've been getting big numbers of bass and blues by day and some big fish after dark.  The daytime action mainly involves stripers and blues from 20-28 inches long that seem to be popping up all over the place where bait comes ashore.  However, after dark is a different story with no fish showing.  I have been targeting breachway waters after dark with a large bucktail jig spiced with a pork rind strip.  I used this last night to nail my biggest blue of the year, a fish that went 13-14 lbs.  It was one of the best fights I have had this year in moving water as I was convinced I had a striper of 25-30 lbs.  Tonight I also scratched a big jig along a channel bottom.  That yielded a good looking 35 inch striper.  When fishing these breachway waters at night, I am using a 1 1/2 oz. homemade hotlips jig that is all white with red thread.  I am adding an Uncle Josh 5 1/4 inch pork rind striper strip.  The jig is cast and allowed to hit bottom.  A slow, bouncy retrieve does the trick.  Once the jig starts to straighten out, reel in.  This lure has accounted for some real large stripers and bluefish in recent years.

Do You Have a Back Up Plan?

These days the marine forcasts are notoriously wrong.  I went down to the ocean yesterday where the forecast called for 3-5 foot waves.  The water at Point Judith was coming right over the East Wall, hardly three footers.  I would have put the waves heights at 5-8 feet, possibly higher in some locations.  It called for an immediate change in plans.
Do you have a back up plan if things aren't right.  And, there's a lot that can go wrong on a trip to the shore....too rough, too sandy, weedy, closed off access, etc.  Before I head down, I always have at least three or more locations in my mind that could produce.  I also try to find areas that are different in their physical make-up but close to one another to avoid burning through gas.  In the above situation, if Pt. Judith is too rough to fish, how about heading into the protected waters of Pt. Judith Pond (second option).  If that doesn't produce, what about a breachway like the Galilee Channel or Narrow River (third option).  Finally, if nothing is working, how about hitting the mouth of the Bay (fourth option).  Being flexible and having several options can make or break a day of fishing.  In yesterday's case, I landed 8 bass to keeper size on a day that looked like I was going to blank.  Having options saved the day.

Score for Day....Bay-5, Ocean-2

I fished in the daytime today at the ocean and the Bay. I had planned to stay down the ocean all day, but some very rough conditions made fishing near impossible.  I suspect that hurricane driven waves were coming ashore, and it shut down the fishing in most places producing sandy and roiled water.  I did, however, manage to find two decent fish in some white water.  They hit a float and Cocahoe rig (see photo).  Sensing I had few options along the rough and tough oceanfront, I decided to hit the Bay on the way home.
Fishing the upper Bay, an area that consistently produced in the past, produced 5 stripers in a variety of spots.  It was one fish here, one fish there with all of them taking quarter oz. bucktail jigs spiced with Pro Bass triple ripple curly tails.  The fish were all about 20 inches except for one keeper that measured 32-33 inches, a terrific fish from shore in this area.
So, for today, the Bay wins.  I'm not all that surprised because I have done well in the past by opting to fish the Bay when the oceanfront becomes unfishable.