Tautog to Double Digits on the Feed in Narragansett Bay
I t’s mid-May, we’re fishing down the moon after a tumultuous week of smoking tides, silt, seaweed almost thick enough to constitute a sunken lawn, and the immediate climate of fishing opportunity is safely on the “yawn” side of the lights-out-explosion-action-blitz-bonanza threshold. There’s a monsoon in the weekend forecast, and an almost universal feeling that this fishing season is running way behind normal, a suspicion that we’re going to have to endure an eternity of more-of-same before this gangly, stumbling season dusts itself off, stands up straight, and start trotting forward.
In the meantime, the Usual Suspects are catching fish quietly, only too happy to let the two-weeks-behind theorists keep the riffraff out of the way for a bit longer. My neighbors are out absolutely mohawking the stocked trout, I’ve endured three thunderous skunkings in the deep night, and the loligo (squid) are clogging up select well-lit harbors along the state oceanfront.
All things considered, the season seems to be right on schedule—if only in the sense that I can’t remember a May in at least a decade that stands out as “normal.” Each spring holds its own wild cards; each runs differently from the ones that preceded it and those that will inevitably follow. Most years there’s talk of our being behind one way or another.
Folks begin, as the weeks grind along, to suspect some ecological foul play. And then, inexplicably—and seemingly overnight—it’s all happening full-tilt at the same time, we jettison all our crackpot theories, destroy any evidence we ever held them. We start fishing in earnest.
The tundra—endless winter and uncertain spring—has thawed and we follow our instincts headlong into the mania of our living months the same way we have every New England year for time immemorial. Brace yourself for the arrival of inevitability.
And please, when you do start catching, take pictures, send them my way, and I’ll see what I can do about making you famous: zhfished@gmail.com.
SNUG HARBOR
Matt Conti at Snug Harbor confirmed the excellent squid fishing that has been happening all over the place, and notably right across from the shop on the Galilee side of the Pond, where calamari enthusiasts and bait-makers alike have been putting together respectable catches of tubes, some of which resemble little league bats. One guy checked in, reporting that he had fluke cleaning whole squid right off his jigs as he cranked them toward the bulkhead. Others have jammed squid elsewhere—Newport Harbor, Jamestown, Quonny, etc. For all this fluke candy in the immediate fore, most diehard flukemen rate the current fishing somewhere in the neighborhood of piss-poor along the South County beaches. Some of my other sources, who’ve been out beating the bushes in the early doormat spots around the Bay mouth, say there’s all kinds of dodgy gillnet gear bunched up at intervals in Newport’s enforcement-free zone between, say, Seal Ledge and Sachuest—not that it’s necessarily gillnets creating this spring’s sluggish fishery.
Of Matt’s guys, the ones coming in with even modest loads of fish for the market have been doing their business over at the Island. At deadline, “mediums,” fluke in the 14- to 16-inch range, are fetching north of $4.50 a pound—probably a good indication of how little market-sized fluke is crossing the docks.
Bass fishing has been a schoolies-or-bust deal to date, with fits and starts of steadier catching in various spots around Matunuck and Narragansett. The Pawcatuck River has had some good fishing—the usual places like Cemetery Cove, but also up in the heart of town behind CC’s. There are fish up in the middle Bay Harbors, more fish at First and Second Beaches in Newport. We’re probably about due for the year’s first surf-caught heavy—a 30-something thaty seems usually to come out of the Deep Hole-Carpenter’s Bar stretch of Matunuck right about…Now. The West Wall was surrendering schoolies until the wind swung east a couple days ago, then crapped out. A Tuesday or Wednesday worm hatch down in Ninigret Pond drew some participation, but Conti was unaware of any worm-hatch activity so far in the Salt Pond. Cod reports are scarce and not altogether encouraging. There are some tautog around and chewing: One regular came in with some good ones he’d stuck off Quonny, but Matt and I suspect you could probably do some spring tog work on Nebraska Shoal or any of the other shallow rockpiles along the south-facing oceanfront.
WARWICK
Kenny Landry at Ray’s Bait in Apponaug checked in with word of some solid tautog fishing underway off the north end of Hope Island and probably any number of other 8- to 20-foot rockpiles from the middle Bay up into Mount Hope Bay. He and girlfriend, Mary Corcoran, kicked off their efforts two weeks ago when Corcoran eclipsed a 7-pounder Kenny had caught with an impressive 11 ½-pound togzilla. Almost all their catching they’ve done with some new blackfish jigs Landry has been pouring at the shop. They tip these 1 ½-ounce jigs with crab halves and keep them moving, drawing some kamikaze attacks. Another trip mid-week, Kenny and a friend limited out on short order, then sent back several others, the largest a 9-pounder they thought should resume her spawning activities. Over the past few days, schoolies have spread out in the west Bay harbors, notably, offered Landry, in Greenwich Bay and Apponaug Cove, where he racked up big numbers winging 9-inch white Slug-go’s against a two-foot bank that runs from roughly Oakland Beach back into Apponaug. These fish, droves of them, ranged anywhere from 16 to 24 inches.
Another guy fishing nearby stuck a fine 24-inch squeteague, and reported rolling two others over the course of a short outing; if the results of the last couple seasons have any predictive value, there should be some memorable weakfishing this season and the next few.
NEWPORT
Peter Jenkins over at the Saltwater Edge reported all kinds of bait falling into position around Aquidneck Island. He marveled at the herring runs so far this spring—a good sign, we can only hope, for the future of that resource. School bass are filling in most places they belong, including First and Second Beach in Middletown, spots along the south-facing rocks, the Seekonk, Kikimuit, Sakonnet, Lees, Westport Rivers, and many others. Squid have been pushing into Newport Harbor, East Ferry, Fort Wetherill, and probably Fort Getty in Jamestown, and various other well-lit harbors up and down the line. Fluke reports have been lean to nonexistent locally, but the tautog fishing is doing just fine as we roll into the last week or so of the spring season.
