Why wouldn’t you switch things up with some lock-and-load
September sinker-bouncing?!
I love and respect striped bass. I enjoy the challenge of getting them to eat plugs in boiling inlet currents long after the rest of the civilized world has hit the rack. I love the unmistakable freight-train run of a 40-pounder a nanosecond after I’ve buried the barb of an octopus hook in her oversized jaw hinge. I love snapping jigs on wire, love diamond-jigging them in the North Rip, love slinging huge snakes into the shoreline stones along the Newport oceanfront or the endless reefs and rockpiles and whitewater off Little Compton. I think I have a pretty good personal handle on why so many folks devote so many hours to their pursuit.
But I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why any Rhode Island fisherman would willingly get himself (herself) into a monogamous angling relationship with bass. For one thing, stripers-or-bust fishing is apt to cost you a great many fall days when the bass are only one place and you can’t reach said place—never mind all the days when, between migratory waves in later innings, the bass are seemingly no place.
In my world, the approach of fall is serious and miserable business that the last way I want to squander my hard-won hours at liberty is beating my head against the piscatorial wall of persnickety, recalcitrant, or otherwise unresponsive stripers. No, come September, I require a steady diet of low-tedium, high-tomfoolery fishing, and since I tend to have surrendered all the fluke I’d put up for winter back in June and July, I also appreciate a decent yield of world-class fillets for future use. What happens is that I run the opposite program from most of my fishing friends, sea bass- and scup-fishing, tautog fishing, a little bit of offshore work tuna fishing, then a bass trip here or there when there are mullet oozing out of South County’s every pore or when I get solid word that a shot of slobs has tucked in tight to Black Rock with some northeast wind in the works.
If you, too, are getting the feeling that another month of serious nautical adventure with stripers might land fishing on the buzz-kill side of the free-time ledger permanently, there’s good news. Month-nine bottom fishing is lights-out, and if you’re willing to spend some energy delving into sinker-bouncing beyond store-bought rigs and same-old hangs, you’ll soon find, as a handful of converts do each fall, that scup or tautog or sea bass fishing is only as simple and stupid as you want or expect it to be. Put another way, there’s more to bottom fishing than most of its critics understand. To give you a better understanding of some high points in September sinker-bouncing.
Island Sea Bass
Usually, you can find some of a season’s fastest action on quality black sea bass along the west side of Block Island the first few weeks of this month. An area off the west side (west of New Harbor, BI) known as the West Grounds will tend to have swarms of sea bass in every conceivable size, five ounces to five pounds scattered around the numerous high spots, mussel beds, and rockpiles. The Southwest corner—the ridge of high ground that runs from SW Point out over four miles to where the reef, marked “Southwest Ledge” on most charts, terminates—is another perennial hotbed of September sea bass activity. There are also untold hundreds of small but sea bass-rich hard-bottom humps, wrecks, reefs and mussel beds scattered all along the south side of the Island, though the previous two spots are closer, a bit easier to find, and less spread out. If you steam down the east side of the Island, you’ll also find prime sea bass fishing, often with more scup in the mix, out on the East Grounds. Five or ten years ago, you seldom heard too much about guys going out specifically to search for black sea bass, but recent years have seen increased publicity about the fishery and accordingly, increased pressure in known sea biscuit haunts. The recent spike in targeted effort has added a bit of challenge to the chore of finding specimens of the right size as a season wears on, but as a rule, the fishing in early September is lights-out.
The real trick in sea bass fishing is to devise ways you can best access the largest fish in a general area. This process begins with boat positioning and spot selection. Where many associate bottom fishing with swinging on the anchor, most Island sea bass sharpies will stick to drifting during the first leg of the fall fishery. The reasoning is simple: Where you find big sea bass, you’ll likely also find tightly-packed little swarms of midget fish. Were you to anchor on, say, the West Grounds, you might pick off a few decent ones, but under most conditions, the combination of baits on the hooks and the baits the fish have pried loose, you’d quickly whip all the resident minis into a churning, quill-finned frenzy that would make a serious challenge of simply keeping baited hooks in the zone.
But if you stay in drift mode, ideally lining up several pieces of broken bottom to cover as you ride down-tide, the movement of the boat over ground keeps baits moving and thus keeps the runts from swarming.
Another key concept is the idea of culling fish “on the bottom”—finding effective ways, that is, to home in on the bigger sea biscuits on a given structure. I’ve always preferred to skip the store-bought rigs that tend to feature tiny hooks that prevent you from hanging a decent-sized bait, and lack the necessary oomph to find solid purchase in the large mouth of a quality fish. I generally run a pair of wide gap hooks in size 1 to 2/0, as the added gap provides a little extra room to carefully impale a larger bait that will often call in the biggest specimen in the area. A trick we sometimes use on the Point Judith headboat, Seven B’s V, is to cut small strip baits out of a fresh-caught choggie, scup or even bluefish. These tough-skinned offerings not only have an uncanny ability to tempt jumbos; they also stay on the hook almost indefinitely, giving a fish that hit and missed a compelling reason to come back for another whack.
Pay careful attention, using your plotter for reference, to areas that seem to most consistently be coughing up better fish, and when you find a hotspot, hit it repeatedly with short, precise drifts.
Lower Bay Mixed Bag
Around the same time the sea bass are piling up along Block Island’s west side, the various wrecks, rockpiles, and reefs around the mouth of Narragansett Bay northward to around Prudence Island generally start to gather big stacks of mixed cellar dwellers—big scup, and sea bass mainly, with the occasional tautog thrown in for good measure. Part of the trick in this area is to employ a kind of stick-and-move approach. Many if not most known productive areas, like the old Brenton Tower rubble south of Jamestown, are in fact whole networks of smaller spots within the spot. Targeting September scup around the lower Bay, you’ll want to sample various pieces of submerged real estate to find one that’s holding the bigger stuff—two-pound scup and 3-pound sea bass, rather than huge haystacks of six-inch scup. It’s wise to take some extra time in spot recon before you commit, and don’t be shy about sampling the size of the stuff you’re marking on the fishfinder.
Just as with sea bass, the scup rigs you use have much to do with not only your catch rate, but the average size of your porgies. Some pin-hookers use the old-style, gold 7/0 or 9/0 Mustad bait-holder hooks most associate with cod fishing. The idea is that a bigger hook will hold a bigger bait, and a bigger bait will attract a bigger porgy. Of course, you can burn through a lot of bait using too-big hooks. The key is to learn when to set the hook. As in tautog fishing, you don’t want to set on the mini rat-tat-tat bites of pin scup or bergalls. You want to wait for a more determined thump, then yank back.
Others favor 2/0 or 3/0 wide gaps or even larger offset circle hooks; both styles warrant less of a hook-set. Just let the line come tight and you’re on. Most of the prefabricated rigs marketed for scup feature #1 or #2 baitholder hooks more suited for bluegill fishing in the local farm pond than for hubcap-sized porgies that pile up on the lower Bay hangs by September. The store-bought rigs work fine, but if the heap of scup you’re working on has a high ratio of shorts, you can spend most of your day tossing 6-inchers overboard and rebaiting.
Baits can also make a difference. The tidy little morsels of clam tongue stay on a hook better, but they don’t have the slammer-scup appeal that a good chunk of black, oozing belly meat does. The latter may only stay on the hook long enough to reach bottom, but if it’s inhaled instantly by a three-plus-pound Joe scup or five-pound sea bass, who cares? If you buy into the bigger-hook theory, an added bonus is that you can have it both ways, carefully threading on some frill or tongue or a strip of squid for “shelf-life,” then add some goopy belly matter for funk. When sea bass and scup are sharing real estate, certain baits like squid tentacles or the aforementioned choggie strips will sometimes find you the four-pound sea bass buried in a cloud of silver.
Standard porgy wisdom says you really only need to hook the first fish. Then you wait, while fish number one drags bait number two around enticingly, ultimately hooking porgy two for you. It’s not usually a long wait. Once you feel the second thump—and roughly double the load on your buckled rod, haul up your double.
Early Jump on ‘Tog
Every year, the first half of month nine, I’ve heard quiet rumblings about the first guys out trying for the first tautog way up the Bay around Hog Island, the pilings all around the Port of Providence on down to Prudence, the Boiler, Sally Rock (where the one-time state record was caught long ago) and even the shallower reaches of high ground on Ohio Ledge. A second fleet would sneak in tight to shore around Anawan Cliffs in northern Narragansett, the mouth of the Narrow River, the very shallow stones along the Gansett rocks, east of Point Judith Light, or even tight to the Harbor of Refuge walls.
While years of reading fishing magazines or following the gossip around the marinas tend to drive the cold-weather aspect of blackfishing into our brains. But as much as Rhode Islanders tend to associate ‘tog with the onset of bone-chilling northwest winds of November, if you can track down one of your skin-diving counterparts, it’s worth inquiring as to where they’ve seen the biggest blackfish lately. A friend of mine starts to get on my case as early as August most years, telling me I’m an idiot not to give it whirl earlier than I usually do. He has always just seen a fish well north of 10 pounds and is utterly convinced it would be good to the point of unfair with a rod and reel.
Most of the guys who actually take full advantage of the first stirring tog in the rocky shallows keep their exploits very quiet, so don’t expect a media blitz announcing the first big days as the tautog that summered in tight prepare to begin the first leg of their seaward dash. Actually, early September into October some years represents what could well be the one time when shorebound fishermen have better odds in the ‘tog department than do their skiff-running counterparts.
The beauty of bottom fishing your way through September is that you’ll still have another two months stretching out ahead when October rolls around.
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