Norwich Bulletin 5/13/06

• Early fluke-fishing trip to Long Island Sound proves fruitless: Right now, fishing conditions are shaping up very nicely. Despite a week of rain and too many days of strong winds, water temperatures are well ahead of last year and the previous two or three seasons.
• Fish are moving, bait is present and everything is poised to break loose in the ocean any time now. Last weekend, I made an exploratory fluke-fishing trip across Long Island Sound to the waters of Shelter Harbor in search of some early-season fluke. We were probably a week too early to have made a really successful trip. To start with, our timing was off when we arrived at Shelter Island, where Joe Balint had said there had been a good early run of fluke going on.
• The tide was nearly dead slack low, so we were drifting much too slowly to be effective for the fluke we were targeting. Right off the bat, we drifted over thick schools of those small stripers that are literally everywhere along the coast. There were about 15 or 20 boats doing the same thing, but no one was catching much when we arrived. We caught a half dozen short fluke to 17.75 inches, a couple stripers, three slammer sea robins, a pair of skate and finally a spider crab, which was about the time we gave up and headed east. When you're drifting so slow that the crabs are a factor, it's time to quit fluking and do something else.
• We ran out and did some totally fruitless prospecting out around Orient Point and near the Ruins before deciding to run the gap to fish the south shore of Rhode Island, specifically Misquamicut Beach. We'd heard there were some fluke caught recently off Weekapaug and the state beach, so we decided to give it a try.
• Again the incoming tide -- not my favorite -- was very slow and near its height, so fishing conditions were far from ideal. Here we saw some striped bass around the boat, caught skate, and another six or seven fluke, this time with one 19-inch keeper before we decided to toss in the towel.
• Despite a far-from-stellar day, the good news is, as reports indicate, there are squid literally everywhere. We had squid chasing our baits everywhere we set our lines, from Shelter Island, N.Y., to Misquamicut Beach. It was great, because where there's fluke this time of year, guaranteed there's stripers eating the squid on top and fluke chowing down from below. Eric even caught a squid -- a big one -- on a Salt Shaker. We had the sense that we simply hit poor drift conditions more than a lack of fish. Everything looks and feels like it's ready to break open the next time we have two or three warm sunny days in a row.
• The fishing this weekend should be excellent with choices ranging from schoolie bass to fluke, a possibility for winter flounder in the Niantic River, shad in the Thames or Connecticut rivers and, of course, schoolie stripers up and down the Thames and every other river mouth and inlet in the region.
• Worm spawns will be kicking off after the next hot sunny day. There were reports of some fast worm-spawn striper-fishing action last weekend at Quonny and Ninigret salt ponds. [BOB SAMPSON JR. For the Norwich Bulletin]