Upper Bay Bunker/Bass Up a Few Pegs; Doormats Fill in at Block
The reviews of recent fishing probably provide, in sum, a fair representation of the piscatorial reality at this stage of the game: The sharpies are pretty well tuning the striped bass—just not in every one of the traditional early-June spots, and certainly not on every tide. These are the guys fishing because many years of their own logbooks tell them it would be foolish not to go, and not the guys—by and large—reading these reports for information. For the rest of us—the 90 percent—it’s been slim pickings on most fronts.
The key to success was, is, and will forever remain, that if you want to catch a lot of fish, you’ll need to fish a lot, taking the skunkers in stride, even when the skunks are traveling in packs—five nights of dead water leading up to the mother of all nights, a fish every third cast, then two more nights of slightly diminishing returns before the slate goes blank again.
Alas, there is no universal variable that will universally foretell improved fishing—no magic water temp, spot, plug, or frontal change that will turn the switch on. Accordingly, you go when it looks good, go when it doesn’t. Go when the first wave is clogged with bait, go when there are no real signs of life.
More importantly, and in the striper world, it’s a sign of our darkening times, you need to brace yourself for the very real possibility that the spots you have loved for ten years may no longer coincide with the present-day lay of the striper resource. Hard as it might be to change your own fishing habits, if you want to keep catching fish, you may need to start venturing a bit farther afield.
Barring a couple of big scores of big fish in the usual mystery haunts—the places where parking is iffy and the fishing, timing-sensitive in the extreme, surf fishermen have been picking away at schoolies and the occasional 30-inch bass throwing the usual assortment of smaller topwaters, rubber shad, swimming plug/teaser combinations, or bucktails up and down the line. Nothing local has been wide-open for any period of time. The surfmen logging the big results to date have been cashing in on stupid-fishing in huge crowds at the Cape Cod Canal, which has been alive with big bass for the better part of a week. There have been some bigger fish taking topwaters even during daylight at various spots around Buzzards Bay. Montauk has been pretty much deadsville at least as of press time.
Christian at Watch Hill Outfitters said there have been bass, schoolies and a big load of cookie-cutters between 29 and 31 inches, particularly in and around the bunker schools that are patrolling the mighty Pawcatuck River system anywhere from Watch Hill up to the Cemetery and into downtown Westerly on the higher tides. There have been occasional bigger fish taken, mainly by the guys willing to log big hours in the nighttime suds. Fluking is picking up slowly along the beachfront anywhere from Weekapaug to Watch Hill—and much better overall since a stubborn pile of cold water jumped up into the mid-50-degree range and ushered in some numbers of squid and the fluke that move with them.
The surf fishing has been mainly a schoolie affair between Charlestown and Point Judith Light, though all of the salt-pond channels have surrendered bigger fish after dark to guys who know the where’s and when’s and fish all the nights in between.
Elise at Snug Harbor Marina noted it’s been a pretty slow season on the bait and fuel end of their business—not too many guys out and about so far—but did add that tackle sales have been fairly brisk. There are fits and starts of bass anywhere from the mid-20-inch range into the 20-pound-plus class, at the North Rip and around the SW Corner and other points around the Island. The first big fluke of the season, a 10.1-pounder stuck by Tom McMahon, perhaps, she thought, somewhere along the lower west side, probably the Southwest corner. There has been a fairly steady flow of keepers and better slabs in the 4- to 7-pound range, mainly from the Island’s west side. One of the day boat draggers said there have been some better fluke in better numbers creeping northward toward the beach, with a nice slug of fish up along the east side of the north end. You can probably expect some better fluking in the deeper-water spots around the mouth of Narragansett Bay, the Narragansett, Jamestown, and Newport spring spots, within a week or two. Squid have been absent until the last week, when water along the beach jumped into the mid 50s after a long streak at 51 degrees—the latter plot of cold water, stretching from Watch Hill to Newport, more or less, having fended off the squid that generally draw the first bigger bodies of gamefish into easy mainland striking distance. Scup along the beach are starting to feed. The sea bass are plentiful—needless to say—but they’re off-limits thanks to foolish regulatory mechanisms.
Word from several sources is that there was quite a bit of activity in the bass/bunker department in the upper reaches of the Bay—around Prudence and up the Providence River to around Save the Bay. Largest fish I got confirmed word on was about 38 pounds, though there have been numbers of 30-pound-class. Tautog are now closed, after a pretty good showing on the middle- and upper-Bay hard pieces.
Sam Toland of Sam’s Bait and Tackle in Middletown wondered aloud where all the fluke are hiding over at Block Island—a place that has turned out plenty of commercial rod-and-reel fluke, including a slow trickle of jumbos to around 7 pounds, over the last couple weeks, almost exclusively from west-side grounds. Water has been cold thus far—cold enough to explain a relatively sparse fluke fishery to date. It is June, has only been June for a handful of days; it’s almost always June when the fluking begins to take shape in earnest. The squid, late in arriving this season, look like they’re finally moving in—a push of life that should, if all goes according to the time-honored script, get things moving on most inshore angling fronts over the next couple weeks. Toland, who always has a firm handle on what’s happening and where, noted the upper Bay bass action has been tough scratching for even the sharpies, who are managing to find their fish but not without considerable effort. “There’s definitely a lot more feed [in the form of bunker] than there are predators,” he said, adding that this ratio never makes the prospect of finding cooperative bass an easy one.
