I f, without time to climb on a roller coaster or attempt to break a land-speed record out somewhere in the desert, you want to experience the sense of hurtling through space with no control whatsoever, here’s what you do: Promise your son and or daughter that you’ll take them out deep sea fishing sometime before the end of summer vacation. Then, e-mail me your phone number, and I’ll track you down the last week of August to check on your progress.
Where the time goes—how it gets by us so fast—is one of those things not worth wasting additional minutes lamenting. The only real relief comes from living richly enough—even if you’re broke—that you constantly lay out milestones, memorable days, to which the rest of what you do will stick. You won’t remember dropping your daughter off at soccer practice Tuesday or bickering over what to eat for dinner Thursday, but you will, I guarantee, remember a day you spent with your family catching stripers and blues off Block Island. And oddly enough, I bet you’ll remember the less momentous days in relation to the big ones. The hell with “a little,” if you don’t live a lot, there’s no way to corral all those days into little blocks you will not only remember, but relish.
I mention this because, well, it’s July. Wait…What?! July?!
Another way you can experience the speed of sound relative to a calendar is to work for a magazine, where somehow, inexplicably, you’re breathing that long, blissful sigh that arrives the second you’ve shipped an issue—Hooray!—and then, 15 minutes later, you come to your senses and another month or week has evaporated and it’s time to put on your trusty crash helmet and prepare for…
Another deadline. Your Goodly Publishers, Mike and Lisa, and I have spent the last month pinning down exactly where this thing is headed. After much deliberation—and countless discussions with fishing businesses around the state—we’ve decided that the best bet is to give you who have been reading this action-packed publication access to a ton of additional information. After attempting to look forward, leaning on fishing forecasts designed for 30-day shelf-life, it’s become clear that we need to communicate with y’all much more frequently than that.
So, effective this week, through late autumn, I will be compiling fishing reports every week and blasting them out to you through several different channels. First and foremost, you can sign up to receive them by visiting www.coastalanglermag/rhodeisland and providing your contact.
The idea, naturally, is that attempting to crystal-ball our way through a month’s fishing is like target shooting with a factory-seconds grenade. Besides letting us provide better information at four-times the frequency, these electronic updates will let us break news we’d otherwise have to table for some future issue. More importantly, moving the where-and-when content into these weekly broadcasts will free up much-needed space we can then use to better effect here. The monthly print magazines will thus focus more on fishing techniques as we apply them in Rhode Island waters, the various people and places making the sport-fish highlight reels week in and week out, recipes and seafood news, more of the “New Grounds” entries, and all the other stuff that will let you make best use of your precious hours on or beyond our shores.
I will be tapping into the information pipeline every Thursday, writing the new fishing updates, then making them available to you in time for Friday morning—just in time for the weekend. That means you’ll get information that was still swimming 12 hours ago via some of the state’s sharpest piscatorial prognosticators. We’re also busy running through the various pinpoint tide calculations to eventually give you the times for the many places off the “standard” Newport or Block Island high tides, to help you understand the “lags” local fluke and striper nuts use to lay out intelligent game plans before they throw the rods in the truck or hang the dock lines on their designated pilings for a night out on patrol.
Stand by for additional updates on the new weekly fishing reports on the website or our Facebook page.
In other news, the long anticipated “squid run” remains “anticipated”—no real signs of life in the usual gravel-bottom areas along the South County beaches where our loligo squid have long gathered each spring to sow a new year’s crop. The underlying reasons for the big no-show remain an object of all kinds of speculation and no solid answers. I’ve heard global warming, cooler-than-average water temps offshore, moon phases, dogfish, last year’s big storms (Sandy in particular), the US government, God, and the character, Pinhead from the 80s horror flick franchise, Hellraiser, mentioned as likely contributors to what has mushroomed into a full-blown economic catastrophe around the commercial docks in Point Judith—and elsewhere (Nantucket Sound, generally a very strong run, has been virtually squidless this spring, too).
Here’s hoping that we’re just seeing some anomaly in the ever-changing world of fish movements—It happens. While I wouldn’t suggest that anyone ignore the squid situation, neither would I encourage panic. Remember the summer a number of years back when there were football bluefin tuna all over the beach, off Newport, the Bay mouth, and the south shore? And remember the season after that when it happened again? Me either…It never did. At the risk of riding into Clichesville on a steed named…Uh…Horse, the “only thing that never changes is change,” or “Change is the only thing that never changes because change is—like—the…uhhhh…something, something.” You know what I mean, and if you’ve been fishing for any period of time, you know that the old saying is particularly true of our marine environment: It usually turns out to have been a wise choice not to state as fact some wild new theory that tries to make a new pattern of a one-season result. Stand by to stand by for a squid run. (True Fact: Right now, every single loligo in the Atlantic is stacked up like cordwood, not in the Gulf Stream, but in the Jet Stream—and they’re laughing too hard over a most excellent practical joke they’ve played on the drag fleet to actually migrate.)
Meanwhile, things appear to be shaping up on more or less the usual schedule. The first makos of the year have made an appearance in the Horns, the bass fishing is starting to get mighty good off Jamestown and Newport, with some heavy fish clocked in that general vicinity the second half of June. Block Island’s striper situation hasn’t been red-hot by June-at-Block-Island historical standards, but a few sharpies expect the first moon in July will mark the arrival of some bigger fish out there. Incidentally, the majority of commercial bass for the first half of June were just-keeper (34-plus-inch) fish out of a pretty reliable live-pogy bite in the upper reaches of Narragansett Bay. Fluking has been good to outstanding, and expectations are high for another year of big sea bass.
Thinkers and over-reactors to every normal fluctuation in the wildly complex ecosystems we spend lifetimes trying to fathom. Either way, it’s June. And squid or no squid, fishing is now officially in high gear. One pattern I do feel comfortable committing to is that, absent the “fall run” fishing your fathers and grandfathers were forever fishing in anticipation of, there is no more reliable time in striper fishing than this month. Yes, the July moons, August, early September will bear witness to most of the biggest bass Block Island waters will turn out this year, but in terms of angling opportunity in every corner of Rhode Island waters all at once, the time is right now. Look alive. This is not a dress rehearsal. There are no do-overs. Get out there now and give it hell. There will be plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead.
When you see your local tackle shop or a reputable charter or party boat advertising in these pages, know that they’re supporting this mini-community built on a common love for local salt waters. If you believe in our cause, show that by supporting them—and while you’re at it, tell them you saw their ad in these pages. If, in the meantime, you have an “Oh s@#$!” or an “Attaboy!” or better yet, some candid thoughts about stories we should run, spots or tactics we should spotlight, you can get me at zhfished@gmail.com.
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