Falls fly by. Storms line up like planes in a landing queue, and pummel us in rapid succession. Between easterly blows—the hurricane remnants and the nor’easters—winds gust out of the northwest as cold fronts sweep down from Canada. In an average week, there’s plenty of wind from all the points of the compass rose. Before you know it, you’re looking at the second half of October, wondering how all those weeks got away from you.
My friends and I fish desperately in autumn. We don’t get particularly attached to any one species or any one area. We realize prying 30 or more fishing days out of a Rhode Island fall means lots of compromise. When Block Island’s SW Ledge area is rendered unfishable by screeching SW winds, we sample the west side of lower Narragansett Bay, plugging up half a hundred big blues or setting up on one spire or another to try for some tautog. When it howls northwest, we work our way from Point Judith down the beach to the west, tucked up in the lee anywhere from Green Hill to Watch Hill. We target scup, sea bass, blackfish, stripers, false albacore, blues or whatever else we can catch. We get in many days most don’t, and we make a concerted effort to minimize the number of sound thrashings we take in the process.
Our trips are about fetches and lees, and the beauty of southern Rhode Island is that you can almost always find the latter. When it blows out of the east or southeast—all fetch and no lee—relish in the opportunity to sleep in, free, for once, of the gnawing fear that somewhere, your friends are out tuning the fish without you.
Northerlies
Folks get frustrated by forecasted winds over 15 knots, particularly northeast winds. But if you’re confident you can navigate your launch ramp or slip, you can fish most of the beach on any wind out of the north. The worst of your day is apt to be loading the boat back on the trailer or trying to spring your way back into the slip. Once you round the corner at the West Gap, you’ve got twenty miles of prime beachfront–Green Hill, Charlestown Breachway, Fresh Pond Rocks, Quonny, Weekapaug, the Watch Hill Reefs—and a way-better-than-average shot at blitzing fish from mid-October on. It’s a known thing among surfmen that bass go haywire during the early stages of a northeast blow, and boat fishing isn’t much different—except that you can run fish down when they move off the beach. You can also cover more water much faster than shorebound casters can. The wildcard in fishing nor’easters is whether the system has put a big sea on. A big offshore storm often creates a south or southeast heave, and when those rollers run into the teeth of a breeze from the north, things can get very ugly indeed.
Northwest winds, the prevailing fall direction, are also fishable, though it’s wise to keep a close eye on the wind, lest it come more west than northwest, straight down the pipe. On a northwest, you can fish the beach, or zip out the East Gap in Point Judith and fish anywhere from Point Judith Light north to the Jamestown Bridge. If you can’t find life in that stretch of water, it might be time to price out some golf clubs.
Southerlies
The whole fetch concept—that is, a stretch of open water where wind can push seas with no obstructions—gets a bit trickier when it blows out of the south. The trouble there is that you’ll travel quite a ways south and west before you hit any land to knock down the seas. A couple days of southwest over 20 knots will put a wicked heave on along the south shore. In that scenario, Point Judith loses its luster as a jump-off point. You can run the gauntlet out of the East Gap and hook a left up into the lee of the Narragansett shore, but the waters right out in front of Point Judith Light can get beyond hairy, particularly when a tide dumping out of the Bay runs into the wind. A better idea there would be to launch at Monahan’s (Pier Five) in Narragansett, then work north or south. You could also launch further up the Bay in Wickford and work south.
If your boat’s big and seaworthy enough to make the run, you can find some pretty fine scup and sea bass fishing, and—obviously—plenty of prime striper and bluefish habitat along Block Island’s east side, out of the wind. The trick, unless you have the luxury of laying to for a week in Old Harbor, is to keep a close ear on the Wx, and a sharp eye on the flags, to be sure you make it back to the mainland before the wind really cranks up.
Winds straight out of the south are painful, since there’s nowhere to hide, and a thousand miles of open water to build seas. Early on in blow, you can sometimes make the crossing to the north end of Block Island, weathering a moderate jostling on the way to calmer waters in the inner rip at the north end. Again, if forecasted winds are from the southeast, go anywhere but fishing.
Forecast vs. Reality
My natural reaction—and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone, here—is to get a little balky when the NOAA text forecast predicts any wind over 20 knots. While I wouldn’t advocate departing from your boat-handling comfort zone, you can, with a bit of creativity, salvage quite a few windy days by studying the charts and playing the lees.
It’s always a good idea to cross-reference forecasts with real-time information obtained from the “buoy reports,” available at www.ndbc.noaa.gov. In fall, fronts are notorious for arriving early and leaving late. If a forecast predicts two-to-fours and SW winds of 15 to 20, and the Montauk buoy is recording four-to-sixes and 25-knot winds, you can be fairly certain the weathermen are telling lies. When you catch them in one lie, count on the fact that the rest of the forecast is out the window. In wake of more serious weather—a two-day sou’wester or three days of northeast, factor in leftover seas, and consider their interplay with current winds. A sea running south to north and a northwest wind will mean a sloppy day on the water.
Practice Prudence
As much as you can push the weather, never let your guard down. If you’ve run down the beach, feeling a little smug that you’re catching fish in flat seas despite 25 knots of northeast, get ready to pull the plug if you feel the wind coming more east—right down the pipe. If you get that eerie weather feeling, like things could turn sour at any moment, stay close to home. If the wind does come on stronger than you’re comfortable with, it’s much better to be five minutes from the slip than 15 miles to west’ard.
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