Black Sea Bass Finally Open at One-Fish Bag, 14″ and Up
“We’ve got some absolutely gorgeous blue water south of the Island right now—we could see straight down 50 or 60 feet the other day, see blue sharks all lit up long before we’d normally see color. It’s some of the best-looking water we’ve seen in years.”
Capt. Andy Dangelo, charterboat Maridee II, Friday, July 3.
Like it or not, it’s the Fourth of July weekend, and the traffic as this goes to press is nothing short of staggering, whether you’re traveling by land or by sea. If you’re going to log some time off land this weekend, realize that you may have a struggle to find some of the jumbo stripers that have begun to fill in on the usual high spots and hard pieces off the SW Corner at the Island. The problem with the high-traffic weekends like this one is that the intense fishing pressure—to say nothing of the boating traffic—usually has the effect of dragging the fish off the bottom features that typically concentrate them. Same might be said of the school bluefin tuna fishing south and southeast of Block Island as this goes to press Friday, noonish: Whereas the vast majority of bluefins (mostly cookie-cutters in the 40- to 43-inch range) are being taken by folks trolling “blind,” in areas that aren’t necessarily showing any visible signs of tuna activity, the armada of boats drilling the grounds the next couple days will likely leave the tuna skittish and scattered. There are good sharks around, too, but you might be competing with a great many slicks if you go looking for them the next couple days. Fluking is slow, with the “bite,” such as it is, confined to very short, specific tidal and sea/drift-conditions windows. There are bass and blues on the reefs and rockpiles from the Newport oceanfront eastward to Sakonnet Point. There are numbers of 50-plus-pound bass coming from the Island, mainly in the cockpits of the guys who know how to play the night tides—coming and going “while the world sleeps,” to borrow a phrase from my friend and fellow fish-pencil, the late Tim Coleman. In the meantime, if you’re hell-bent to come home with some fillets, you should be able to scratch your one-fish limit of black sea bass on fairly short order.
Mikey Wade at Watch Hill Outfitters said there are some big bass being landed, by the boat and surf guys, but there’s a strong correlation between talent/experience and striped bass success thus far this season. Local surf nut, Scott Aragoni, has been beaching bass to around 30 pounds on a near-daily basis—but not without logging long hours slinging eels into the nighttime surf. On the boat side, the usual suspects are working a slow pick of almost exclusively jumbo stripers—fish in the 30s and 40s and the occasional 50—on a one-here-one-there basis during very specific windows in the tides. Fluking is a more random affair at this stage of the game, with less of a connection between skill and big catches: The fluke that are around are biting where and when they please. If you’re fishing the right timing, you’ll report a very solid fishery, and if you hit the conditions wrong, you’ll be left scratching your head. On the balance, you’ll do fine off Misquamicut or Weekapaug if you fish often, averaging out the skunkers against the full limits. Largest slab that made it to the shop scale weighed around 7 pounds. The black sea bass are still all over the place and they’re big. Scup are chewing off Watch Hill Light, while the boat guys are picking through a bunch of little stuff to find the big ones. There are pogies in the River still, all the way up to the boat launch in downtown Westerly.
Matt Conti at Snug Harbor noted that a few boats, one of them run by Joe Mariani, jammed the bass—limited out and left the fish biting—at the Southwest Corner right out to the Peanut right through the tide between 8 and 11 p.m. Thursday night. The aforementioned skipper had fish to 52 pounds, Matt said. The general sentiment is that the Island has just gotten a new slug of fish right on schedule with the first “July” moon, but it’s tough to say that with absolute certainty based one a day or two of fishing results. There are fish on the Double Humps and other spots in and around the North Rip as well, but the fish there have covered a range of sizes. There has been intermittent surface action in the very early mornings as bass from schoolie size all the way up sipping sand eels. The fluke fishing is about the way it has been: It’s goods one day in one place, dead the next day, with no reliable concentrations of good-sized slabs bunched up on any particular piece of seabed. You should have no trouble putting together a limit of black sea bass—one fish per man, 14 inches or greater—and there are now plenty of scup filling in on the harder pieces.
The school bluefin tuna action south of the Island remains better than any we’ve seen in quite a few years, with loads of cookie-cutter 40- to 43-inch specimens scattered over a wide area. Capt. Buzz and the crew of Aerie One hooked, landed, then released a grand total of 11 football tuna on Thursday. Ballyhoo, cedar plugs, Green Machines and other standard trolling offers are all working, but don’t expect an epic Blue Planet-worthy display of marine life marking the day’s tuna hotspot. That is, don’t bother chasing a few crashers all over hell’s half-acre because you’ll get whatever fish you’re going to get trolling blind. The big trick, with a massive load of big bluefish on patrol around the Mud Hole, Sharks Ledge, the Fairway Buoy, etc., is to get far enough south that your trolling spread doesn’t get covered up with toothy critters. One area among others that turned out school tuna was Tuna Ridge. There have still been numbers of sharks, including plenty of blue sharks, some impressive threshers, and mostly smaller makos spread out south and east of Block. If you stop short, be sure to keep a close eye on the state of your hookbaits, lest you get eaten out of house and home by bluefish or doggies.There was at least one boat headed for the canyons as of late Friday morning, but Matt had no reliable recent intel as this goes out the door. The only morsel of info was that the last few boats that went from the Point wound up way east.
Capt. Andy Dangelo on the Maridee II said his charters had striper limits from Wednesday onward, adding that the full moon seems to have delivered a new shot of bass to the Island—both the North Rip and the Southwest Corner. Largest of a grand-total catch that included fish from schoolie size to 30 and 40-plus pounds was a fat 54-pound cow. All these fish have been taken on frames trolled on wire. Dangelo noted he’s been encouraged by what he’s seen the last few trips: Where it’s been a season of tough pickings—the fish scattered over a wide area, a fish or two per spot, but no numbers stacked on any one structure—he said his anglers stuck 8 fish on one high spot in an hour’s fishing Thursday morning. Here’s hoping we continue to see bass filling in over the next couple weeks. Dangelo also confirmed the school tuna and some impressive sharks are around below the old 800 line. When we wrapped up a call Friday morning, the bluefish were overrunning the Island grounds. Fluking took a nosedive after the powerful squalls, thunderstorms and downpours mid-week, but that should turn around as waters continue to clean up over the weekend.
Joe at Sam’s said the bass have continued to fill in on the reefs and rockpiles from Brentons eastward, with good numbers of fish in the 20- to 30-pound range, and the occasional larger one, taking pogies—live, dead, chunked or yoyoed, or eels, among other offerings. The early mornings through the second half of the week saw some solid activity on the surface, with blues as large as the teens mixed with school bass from schoolie size to the low teens. There are still some pogies up the Bay in Bristol Harbor and parts of Mount Hope Bay, and droves of small and medium choppers all over the place. There have been intermittent schools of pogies around Newport Harbolr and Fort Adams. The big sea bass opener on July 1 means you can now set aside 7 or 8 minutes of a trip targeting something else to secure your one sea bass per man. No current reports on the bluefin activity, but word has it they’re still aroundin some beautiful clean blue water not far south and east of Block Island. Fluking remains an iffy proposition, with a pick of fish one day and precious little the next.
Be sure to check back every Friday for a new RI Fishing Report by Zach Harvey!
