LI Boating World, Bob Sampson

• Late March into early April winter flounder
  Early April searun trout
  Early April white & yellow perch
  Mid April trout season opens
  Mid April schoolie striped bass
  
• Late March into early April used to bring with it the first winter flounder action in the state and it still does. The problem is there are so few flounder around that many anglers have given up on them and the rest have a tough time catching even half of an eight-fish, 12-inch minimum length limit. Poquonnock River at Bluff Point Park, Groton turns on in March, shortly after ice out. About the same time or slightly later, Jordan Cove comes to life as do any fish in the upper portion of Niantic River above the tracks. Mystic, the lower Thames and Pawcatuck Rivers also produce a few fish about this time, but very few in recent years. Flounder fishing is nearly dead, unfortunately. Last year’s sport catch was the worst in more than 30 years of record-keeping at an estimated 4200- fish total for the year. That’s pretty poor flounder fishing. In fact, perhaps writers like me shouldn’t be promoting the fishing for this species at this point in history. I will probably not target this species this spring in this area. Instead, I plan to head north to Boston Harbor where, according to a friend, the fish are making a comeback and can take the pressure much better.
• Early in April is also a time to work the coastal streams and estuaries that are listed as searun trout streams for searuns. However, the best of this fishery is past by now. Tthe best searun catches are made just after ice-out through the first week or so in April in most places, but there may still be a few of these elusive brown trout around to target, maybe even catch. April is the time of the spring when I make a trip or two to the Connecticut River, or rather to the major coves and inlets on this river such as Hamburg Cove off Route 156 to catch a few white and yellow perch for the pan. It’s a great “ice breaker” style of fishing that is simple and usually pretty productive. The yellow perch tend to hit better early when water temps approach their spawning temperature of 41 degrees F and a few degrees above that point. Then the white perch take over through the end of the month, even into early May in years like 2004 with lingering cold temps through June.
• For many, maybe even most Connecticut anglers, April means the official opening of the trout season on the third Saturday of the month. Despite the fact that for all practical purposes, with TMA’s (Trout Management Areas) trophy trout lakes, trout parks (super-heavily-stocked, family-oriented areas), etc., an angler can fish for trout somewhere in the state year round, this day is a psychological starting point that I really like. It’s a reference point in the angling calendar.
• Schoolie stripers in the Thames River provide every spring, beginning some time in April. This spring schoolie action in the Thames usually peaks right around opening day of the trout season. When temps are unseasonably warm, the Housatonic, Connecticut, Pawcatuck and other large coastal estuaries are usually turned on by that time as well, but from migratory fish moving out of the Hudson River. The Thames fish are already there when the ice breaks.
• The Thames is perhaps the most consistent and best early season place to fish for schoolie stripers, with fairly decent odds of connecting with fish of 30 inches or more if you fish the right places with bigger lures. The reason is that there are tens of thousands of striped bass that spend the winter, primarily stacked up like cord wood, in the upper third of the river, between Norwich Harbor and the Mohegan Sun Casino. There also a few fish that spend the winter around warm water discharges from the two power plants in Montville and I’ve heard recently that some fish can be found around the warm water discharge from that filthy, air-polluting, garbage-burning plant in Preston. The latter two places hold a very small number of fish but only when the warm water is flowing out of the pipes, as compared to the upper reaches of the river where they stack up five to 15 feet thick in Norwich Harbor on a daily, actually, tidal basis.
• When spring temperatures hit the region and melt the ice and snow off, this melt water flows into the river and sinks to the bottom of the Thames as it reaches 39 degrees F, which is the temperature where water is at its maximum density. At the same time, less dense surface waters are warming up from the surface down. Those bottom hugging stripers will move up out of the zone of coldest water on the bottom and suspend five to eight or 10 feet above bottom in the lower reaches of the warm blanket of surface water during this period when surface temps are in the low to mid 40’s, just before surface temps become high enough (50 degrees F) for them to turn on and spread into the shallows. The image on a depth finder screen looks like an Oreo cookie at this time. Within a couple of weeks the surface temps in the shallows of the river reach 50 to 52 degrees and those huge dense schools of bass in the upper river break up, move downriver and spread out onto the warm, shallow flats and into coves to feed, creating a shallow-water, light-tackle-and-fly fishery that can be as good as fishing gets. The fish are usually small schoolies ranging from 14 to 24 inches, but fish to 40 inches are present and chasing the few alewives and blueback herring that have been running up the Thames for the past four or five years. The magic key to getting the spring run officially going that creates the great shallow-water bites the Thames River is famous for, is the creation of 50- to 52-degree surface temps in the river’s shallow flats. Once they warm up to that point, look out! This temperature level is normally achieved some time between the first (during warm springs) and third weeks in April, the typical prime time.
• When the bass begin moving in the shallows the river literally turns on from Greenville Dam to New London, in fact, when the alewives are running, some of the largest fish in the river will be found pushing this large forage into the mouth of tributary streams such as Trading Cove Brook, Crowley Brook (Poquetanuck Cove), up to the falls at Uncas Leap on the Yantic River and up through and including the shallow rapids leading up to the Greenville Dam on the Shetucket side of the river. In the Thames and anywhere else for that matter, when the bass move in to feed on herring, any place that slows their movement, such as rapids or dams will collect feeding striped bass that are easy to reach and, therefore, catch.
• Connecticut still has the ban in place for 2005 on the possession of river herring (both alewives and blueback herring), so anglers can’t snag or net them for use as live hook baits like they did in the past. Live herring were by far the best way to target the larger bass that swim in the Thames and other coastal rivers this time of year. As a result, fishermen must find alternative lures that look like a river herring and fake them out. Any lure with a long, narrow profile that’s nine inches to a foot long, silvery with a blue or black back, that is fished in areas where the stripers are chasing herring will take fish
• The Connecticut River, which runs colder due to the huge amount of run-off from the north, is usually about two to three weeks behind the Thames, but the “good fishing period” in this huge river lasts twice as long, often running into early May if temps remain cool like they have for the past few springs. Late in April the bass will be moving westward out of the Hudson River at a rate of about two townships per day. It is possible to chart their movement if you keep in contact with coastal tackle shops as I do from week to week. When this Hudson migration combines with fish heading north out of the Chesapeake Bay area, the rivers further up the coast and in the eastern end of the Sound suddenly get a boost that coincides with the arrival of squid into the region, some time in mid May. But that’s next month’s column.
• Right now, look for stripers below dams and obstacles to movement in large coastal rivers and their mouths. There may be a few winter flounder present to catch, but striped bass are the best bet for the moment.