On The Water 5/11/06

1. Last year we had “weird conditions” in a bad way; this year is shaping up to be the opposite – “weird good.”
2. Even though we have had some retrograding of water temperatures for the past week, it hasn’t been as severe as in 2005. The winter of 2006 was mild enough that things were off to an early start and seem to be shaping up very well so far this spring. Last weekend water temperatures ranged from 55.6 over at Shelter Island, New York, to 50.8 in the Race, 49.9 mid-Sound off Stonington, to 51 or 52 off Misquamicut and the beaches south of there. Not bad compared to the past three springs, and the positive effect of heat is already showing.
3. Bait in the form of squid is abundant throughout the region. Squid are being reported everywhere from the mid-sound region of Connecticut up the coast to Rhode Island and probably beyond. When the squid are around, the bass, fluke and everything else is not far behind – in fact they are already here and in the “building” mode. My guess is the next time we have a break in the weather and the sun gets to cook the waters for a day or two everything is poised to break loose for the spring squid bites and worm spawns.
4. Mid-week rains have probably put a damper on worm spawn activity temporarily, but count on them coming out in force the next time we have two sunny, hot days back to back. They were reportedly getting revved up last weekend in Rhody’s salt ponds.
5. Kevin at King Cove Outfitters, Stonington said there’s been a pretty good amount of bass around. Like every where else, there’s nothing big to speak of, occasional keepers and loads of schoolies between 12 and 20 inches. Squid are all over the place. Earlier this week a few larger stripers showed up in Quonny Pond feeding on the worms that came out to play during one of the few sunny days we had over the weekend. Fluke have been reported on the outside of Fishers Island – mostly shorts, a few keepers, but no doormats at this point in time. There was a school of big bunker in one of the coves near the shop earlier in the week. Which is the third report of adult menhaden in the eastern end of Long Island Sound this week. This is great news, because adult bunker have been very rare any where east of New Haven for the past decade or more, since the bunker boats (the commercial purse seine fishery) essentially wiped them out in this region during the 1970s and 80s.
6. Al Fee of Shaffer’s Marina, Mystic said that there has been “all kinds of crazy stuff going on” in his area this week. There are a few fluke being caught over at the Rhody beaches, but most are shorts. One group of local anglers said they caught three fish on Sunday off Misquamicut Beach, but none were keepers. Many people came in for fluke bait, but no one came back with talks of 18-inch long legal summer flounder yet. With squid all over the place in abundance the fluke are around and will be building up in numbers. I suspect that this weekend could bring some of the first good solid reports of decent fluke catches for the 2006 season. One customer caught one legal winter flounder in the Mystic River and Sunday returned to take two keepers out of three fish in the lower river. Schoolie stripers are all over the place, and everyone who is trying is hooking up and having fun with them from all the area bridges and about any where they drift a boat in the Mystic River.
7. Another oddball catch was two weakfish that one customer caught on a grub intended for school stripers from a dock up inside the Mystic River The fish were 21 and 24 inches long. Nothing major in size, but an indication that temps are not too cold and things are moving into this area. There are no “over-wintering weakfish” in this region. My guess is that all the squid in the area are the primary reason weakfish are here, it’s one of their primary foods besides the shrimp they dine on when they are living in the waters to the south.
8. Al was most surprised by a flurry of reports of anglers catching sea-run brown trout from spots like the park, the I-95 bridge and some of the spots in the downtown area. They are small, a foot or less, but this is a good sign for next year because they will be in the high teens or better in length, if there is any number of this species around from the sea-run brown fingerling stocking program the DEP initiated back in 2001 or 2002. These are not genetic strain sea-runs like the old days, but simply excess hatchery browns. Maine and Massachusetts have had success in establishing and increasing sea-run populations via regular stockings of fingerling browns so Connecticut decided to get on board with this method a few years ago, and the fact that people are reporting brown trout from “flounder spots” indicates it may be working.
9. Captain John Planeta, owner of Franks Tackle of Marlborough, said it has been quiet this week due to the weather. Over the weekend a few anglers were out, mostly freshwater fishing and doing very well on trout. The trout have been quality in the Salmon River, with lots of great breeders stocked lately according to a conversation he had with a conservation officer earlier this week. Scuttlebutt in the store has been about the fluke coming in. He has a few customers gearing up for this weekend, which in my opinion should be the first really productive fluke-fishing weekend of the season. No big bass at Enfield Dam yet. The best striper he has heard of was one fish at Enfield that was a big one, some where in the high 40-inch range – but just that one. In Middletown there have been fish up to 38 inches caught by tube-and-worm trolling.
10. Rennie at the Fish Connection in Preston said it has been quiet this week due to the rains. No big bass and even the schoolies have slowed in the Thames this week. Tides have been running weak, winds have been up, which may be the reason for such a slow down in reports from the Thames River, which is usually pretty hot this time of year. The Yantic River has been active, particularly in the lower stretch of the fly-fishing only section, which has been heavily stocked, reportedly due to the fact a land owner shut down the upper portion of this great run of water due to a conflict with an inconsiderate angler. Rennie also heard about the Salmon River being red hot with big fish lately due to the stocking of some quality excess breeders earlier in the week. Shad are running at Greenville Dam. One customer brought a 6-pounder in to the scales late last week. But this week it has been slow due to low angler participation because of the winds and or rains buffeting the region lately.
11. Lou at Hillyer’s Bait and Tackle in Waterford said they heard of yellowfin tuna at the Fishtails because of a 70 degree plus warm-water eddy, or eddies that are offshore at the present time. Winter flounder is still good in the Niantic River, the best Lou has seen since he was a kid. The key is heavy chumming. A 3-pounder came in last week, but there were a bunch of 2-pounders reported as well. He said that one little girl caught a few beauties off the Boats Inc. dock over the weekend, a once common event that he hasn’t observed in a long, long time.
12. One angler was prospecting in the Race over the weekend and said he caught stripers of 41 and 39 inches on Sunday evening. Generally, the Race lights up with big bass some time a few days either side of May 20, this year it appears the invasion is going to be a tad earlier, if its not underway already. Another Hillyer's customer hit a bunch of schoolies at Rocky Neck over the weekend, while others have reported good small bass catches from the Niantic River and off the Millstone Outlet. Other than that catch from the Race there have not been any bigger fish reported from this area at this point in time.
13. Pat Abate of River’s End Tackle in Saybrook said there was a slow down in schoolies in the River lately, a factor that could be due to angler slow down as much as the fish themselves. I had a poor evening Tuesday in the Thames River under pretty much ideal conditions, but I may not have stayed late enough. Pat said there were a few fish off Napatree Point and he heard of the first bluefish of the season coming in from the New Haven area over the weekend. Fluke fishing at Montauk over the weekend produced lots of short fish, with bigger stuff off Greenport.
14. I made a long probing run with a friend on Saturday that encompassed primarily fluke fishing from Shelter Island to Misquamicut Beach. Three of us hit slow drift conditions every place we stopped to fish. From the beginning of the day, our timing was off. We had squid bites and marked squid in super abundance literally every place we stopped the boat and pretty much caught fluke, but we worked for them every place we set our lines. Between the three of us only one 19-inch keeper was caught along with a dozen or so shorts, with four of those fish 17 inches but less than the Connecticut 18-inch minimum size limit.
15. Fluke grow so fast that those 17s and probably some of the 16-inch-class fish we are tossing back now will reach keeper size by the end of the season, but that doesn’t make the expenditure of fuel justified at the present time. Its too early to make any sort of read as to how good or bad the fluking will be once it fully develops for this year. Last year was not so hot, but it was a weird year weather-wise so at this point all we can do is set our lines and drift for a few more weeks before any realistic assessment of this fishery can be made.
16. Captain Jerry Morgan of Captain Morgan’s Tackle in Madison said there are more bass around this week than last. Tons of schoolies are in all the tidal rivers, with the best catches being made during the ebb tide. Bass in the 20- to 25-pound range moved in off the Southwest Reef, Six Mile Reef, Falkner Island and adjacent areas. Bunker are around but not really easy to find and there’s tons of squid in the Madison area, like every place to the east. The Captain said “Its a nice mix of stuff” and he expects things to break loose any time now.
17. Chris Fulton, owner of Stratford Bait and Tackle of Stratford, said they weighed in a 13.88-pound, 34¾-inch long weakfish Tom Wilson brought in that took a piece of squid off Milford on Tuesday. There are also some weakfish being caught off Branford as well which means these fish are definitely moving into the area, especially with the reports of this species in oddball places such as the Mystic River, thirty miles to the east. Shawn Lariccia of Stratford or Milford caught a 15½-pound bluefish off Woodmont in Milford on a mackerel chunk earlier this week. Another notable catch was a beautiful, 4.9-pound, seeforellen brown trout that Jordan Dutrula caught at the Saugatuck Reservoir on Sunday. Seeforellen browns are a species the DEP has been stocking in prime Connecticut waters due to their potential and ability to survive long enough to reach trophy proportions. Bunker are all over the place. One local commercial fisherman who catches bunker to supply the shop said he caught some weakfish in his gill nets recently, which jives with the monster tiderunner they weighed in this week. This means it is probably time to do some casting for weakfish off the West Haven sandbars.
18. Rick Mola, owner of Fisherman’s World of Norwalk, tells me that a good friend Jason Vorhicki and his nephew Michael caught some larger striped bass that tipped the scales to 30, 29, and 21 pounds along with some mid- to high teen sized fish over the weekend from Hempstead Harbor. All these fish were released except the big one. They were using bunker chunks on the incoming tide on the barren mud flats that these fish travel past on their way east out of the Hudson River. Its that time of year. Rick said when he fished with Jason last weekend it was an odd sight, with party boats anchored up in a shallow, inshore harbor along with the small boat fleet, with everyone catching some big bass. He said the spring run has started with anglers fishing in 25 to 30 feet of water. It’s not red hot but rather a slow pick, but there are some top end fish up to and over 30 pounds being caught. Rick said that “On the moon and when the weather straightens out things will break loose.”
19. Bunker numbers are improving, which bodes well for the near future when it comes to the invasion of jumbo striped bass into the western end of the Sound. Schoolies are thick at Cockenoe Island in numbers that Rick has never seen before this early in the season. He said it is like the fall bite. Winter flounder fishing has been good in the Norwalk River and Islands lately, with a hot spot being the waters north of Cockenoe Island, which is where the same friend, Jason Vorhicki caught 14 keeper flounder while using lots of chum. No monster flatties yet but fish to two pounds are common. Huntington Beach Long Island had some weakfish in commercial gill nets last week which is a further indication that there may be a few more weakfish around the region to catch at least over the next few weeks, hopefully for the remainder of the year.
20. Best Bets for Connecticut and Rhode Island:
21. This week there are lots of choices. It is probably worth prospecting for fluke anywhere along the eastern end of the Sound, off Long Island and up along the Rhode Island Coast, with Rhody being the best bet. Winter flounder will disappear as things warm, but after a cool, rainy week look for them in the Niantic River, the Harbor Refuge, in Rhode Island and around the Norwalk Islands. There will be some bigger stripers in the Connecticut River, in western Long Island Sound and Hempstead Harbor, New York, with a possibly of some very good “squid bite fishing” taking place off the reefs anywhere east of New Haven. While we were fluking off the south shore of Rhode Island last Saturday, my buddy Eric Covino saw a break near the boat, cast a Salt Shaker shad body lure to it and caught a squid that weighed in at over a pound! Its only a matter of time before things go ballistic with all the squid around, with bass clobbering them on top and fluke feeding on them from below. The shad fishing in both the Thames and Connecticut Rivers will be improving this weekend and schoolie striped bass are everywhere for those who simply want to have some fun catching fish.