Norwich Bulletin 11/19/05

• Many years ago, there would have been a month or so of great "surface blitz" fishing for bluefish and striped bass in the Thames River during September and October. That just did not materialize like it usually does this season.
• Unfortunately, the 10 days of rain last month nearly ruined this event by washing most of the bait out of the river. Without any large concentrations of peanut bunker, adult bunker and hickory shad to attract predatory fish up into the Thames in large numbers, the schools of larger fish that would normally be bustling around in the shallows simply are not there.
• Also, there appears to be a correlation between lack of bait later in the fall due to flooding and a noticeably reduced population of stripers in the upper river during the winter fishery.
  
• According to the Fish Connection, the upper river from Horton Cove to Norwich, isn't holding much in the way of bait or stripers. However, as is typical for November there are large numbers of bass and scattered bluefish feeding in New London Harbor and around the beach areas off its mouth.
• If things progress as the usually do, a good portion of these stripers currently holding off the mouth of the river will probably begin moving up into the Thames as water temperatures drop through the next couple of weeks.
• Surf fishermen were doing very well off both the Charleston and Quonny breachways. Quonny reportedly had both small and medium bunker as well as some herring. The presence of these larger prey also had a large number of 35- to 40-inch class stripers concentrated off the Quonny Breachway earlier this week.
• A friend said there were some small stripers and big bluefish in the Millstone Point warm water discharge last week. He said the bass were so small that they were being chopped in half by monstrous bluefish up to about 15 pounds, if they weren't reeled in quickly enough.
• No word on what's happening out in the Race, around the Watch Hill/Fishers Island Reef Complex or the island itself due to the miserable windy weather.
• The Race typically holds stripers until Thanksgiving or beyond during warm falls, while the island and reefs will run hot and cold as slugs of fish migrate through the region this time of year.
• Right now water temps are in the mid-50s out in the Sound, which is warm for this calendar date. The fish are not being forced to move by rapidly dropping temps like last year, so they will remain in any area that has a concentration of forage.
• The fall migration is on, so there are constantly pulses of stripers and some bluefish moving into and through this area, sometimes in very large schools. However as time goes on, the amount of space between these schools of fish will increase, which means higher odds of taking a skunking with each trip.
• The gannets are reportedly working over the herring off Rhode Island's south shore beaches now. The presence of these birds is always associated with ocean herring (which are legal to catch and use for bait) and the end of the fall runs. [Bob Sampson]