On The Water 5/25/06

Best Bets for Connecticut and Rhode Island: This weekend will be a great time to do some drifting for fluke along the south shore beaches of Rhode Island, along the south side of Fishers Island or in the usual spots as far west into Long Island Sound as Niantic Bay. Stripers are all over the place. Look for bigger fish in the depths of The Race, off Block Island and sprinkled along the coast. It’s that time when any of the area’s reefs will be holding some “squid bite” bass. Go after them with Slug-Gos, plastic squid, bucktails, rigged squid, and down deep with eels after dark.

1. Reports this week indicated that since last week’s monsoons, the high winds have still kept a high percentage of sport fishermen off the water. But those who got wet and bumped around have done well.
2. Bill at King Cove Outfitters in Stonington said there’s lots of activity around the “corner”, where he’s located. The wind has kept many people at home, but again, those who got out fishing did well during the recent bout of miserable conditions. It appeared to Bill that this week a few more of the fluke in anglers’ catches were keepers. Top end fish he saw over the past few days were up into the 5- to 6-pound range. Still no “doormats” reported at this point in the 2006 fluke run.
3. Cheryl Fee of Shaffer’s Marina in Mystic said that there are many short fluke around, which has been the story pretty much across the board this week. She said one group of anglers out of the marina caught three keepers out of about ten or twelve fish total they caught from the waters off Misquamicut Beach.
   
4. There were also three keeper fluke reported being caught from the waters on the south side of Fishers Island along with a dozen shorts. That’s been the story lately, a ratio of about one keeper to three to five shorts throughout the region.This is bothersome to me, because having a population with so many small fish and a few really big fish, like we saw last summer, is an out of balance population structure. This can arise from a situation called “growth overfishing” by biologists, where fish are harvested before they have the opportunity to grow to larger sizes.
5. Cheryl said that Shaffer’s will be bringing in eels for the weekend. This means there will be some more big fish being brought in to the scales by the next report. Two of their regulars caught a 7-pound bluefish and a 14-pound striper while casting bucktails off the Stonington breakwalls over the weekend. There was also a 40-inch, 28-pound bass caught off the Napatree Bell Buoy from a boat on a diving Rapala. The angler reported that this bass had a belly full of squid, which is further evidence that the “squid bite” is on.
6. Captain John Planeta, owner of Franks Tackle in Marlborough, said nothing much has changed on the Connecticut River this week due to extremely high, dirty water. There had been some bigger fish in the river before the flood, but nothing has been caught since the floodwaters have apparently flushed these fish downstream.
7. Joe Balint of The Fish Connection in Preston on the Thames has been hearing about continued good catches of short stripers all over the river, as has been the case since late March. The bigger fish are a little harder to come by, but there were some keeper-class bass chasing shad around below the Greenville Dam late last week.
   
8. There are also good numbers of schoolie stripers along the coast and up inside all the coves and river mouths. Offshore, some larger striped bass are being caught down deep in The Race, which has been giving up stripers between 38 and 44 inches for over a week now. Joe also mentioned that there have been occasional 1- to 2-pound bluefish being caught in the lower Thames, which is typical for this point in the season. The same thing is taking place out around The Race and vicinity. The small immature blues are moving inshore to feed for the summer, while the adults are moving into their offshore spawning grounds about this time.
9. Squid are not as universally abundant inshore as they were for the past couple weeks, but there were reportedly still good numbers of squid being caught on squid jigs off the Jamestown bridge, which has been hot for squid recently. The Rhody Beaches have “so-so” to good fluke fishing. Peconic Bay and Montauk are apparently holding more and larger flatfish at this point in the season.
10. Inland, the local rivers, Indian Town Brook, the Yantic River, Mohegan Park Pond, Shonnock Brook, and Hewitt Pond were all stocked this past week, which means improved trout fishing for those who pursue this species. Calico bass are just beginning to hit well in Avery Pond, Glasgo Pond and in the back side of Long Pond in the shallows. Good numbers of fish up to a foot in length are being caught from these and probably other lakes throughout the area.
11. Lou at Hillyer’s Bait and Tackle, Waterford said that due to the wind and rain there hasn’t been much action from their regular customers to report lately. One guy said that he was catching stripers from 38- to 42-inches from The Race over the weekend, which jives with other reports we’ve heard from this area which always turns on within five days of May 20 every year.
12. Another angler is tubing successfully at Bartlett Reef and taking some keepers in the mix. The Connecticut River has been producing some schoolies at the railroad bridge, even since the rains according to one of their regulars. The same person said that he caught some recently off the mouth of the Lieutenant River, but his catch per hour numbers are well below what they had been prior to the floods. White Sand’s beach has been producing a few bass lately as well. A couple of “kids” have been taking some good numbers of stripers on into the minimum keeper range on chunk baits off Griswold Point.
13. Another angler said that he caught some fluke off Black Point, while others have not done very well locally or during “road trips.” Greenport and Montauk Long Island are reportedly the hot spots for fluke in the region at this point in the season. The winter flounder catches that were so impressive two to three weeks back from the Niantic River have slowed down to a trickle over the past week. Matt Hillyer said he believed that the winter flounder have moved out into the bay and will be tougher to catch from here on out. The Millstone Point Outflow is producing some bluefish and schoolie bass as usual about this point in the year. Lou, like everyone else I talked to this week, said that all hell will break loose in the ocean as soon as the weather stabilizes and the sun has a chance to kick the water temps back up a few degrees.
14. Pat Abate of River’s End Tackle in Saybrook told me that the fishing should change for the better by the weekend based on the long-range forecasts. The Connecticut River has been dirty all week, but once it slows and clears, which should occur by the weekend, he expects the water should clean up and the fish will be biting. Across the Sound in The Gut and Sluiceway, customers are taking fish up to 35 pounds, but most of the decent fish are in the low 20-pound range.
15. Fluke were caught earlier in the week off Black Point, but the best fishing in the area is inside Peconic Bay. Montauk has slowed a bit, but that is probably due more to high winds than a lack of fish. Fishers Island was like other areas this week, mostly smaller fish at a five to one “short to keeper” ratio, which when you have to run a boat across the Sound is barely or maybe even not worth the price of fuel.
16. Captain Jerry Morgan of Captain Morgan’s Tackle, Madison reports that there are good numbers of “fat, fat, fat bass” as he puts it the Madison area. He’s a weigh station for the Northeast Angler, slot-limit-style striper tournament that’s being held this weekend. Only fish between 30 and 34 inches can be entered in this event. He’s seeing some small bluefish, “but they are not a pain in the butt” yet as he put it, but they are around and hitting anything that’s cast in front of them. There are some adult bunker and big hickory shad around the area to draw and hold the big stripers that are moving in, but no specifics on catches this week. A few fluke are being caught in the Madison area. Here, like the rest of the region, the fluke being brought abroad are mostly smaller fish, “on either side of 18 inches.” All the people coming into his shop are reporting “tons of skate” getting in the way, which is bad news for the area’s fluke meisters.
17. Chris Fulton owner of Stratford Bait and Tackle Stratford said they weighed in stripers of 18 and 21 pounds from Bridgeport Harbor that were caught on mackerel chunks over the weekend, but otherwise the bass action has been slow since the Housey began to flood with the recent rains. Derby dam is producing a few fish up to 23 pounds. The weather’s been keeping people home so he didn’t have much more to report. Two parties of anglers did make the run across the Sound to Mattituck, Long Island for fluke over the weekend. They both limited out on fish to 5 pounds but they got beat up on the trip. Brown water kept anglers at home. No weakfish have been reported since two weeks back. Chris said that it looks like a good weekend, weather-wise, for the first time in four weeks.
18. Nick at Fisherman’s World, Norwalk said that Jim Kristensen caught a dozen bass, with four over 25 pounds and topped off by a 27-pounder on Friday in Hempstead Harbor, New York using fresh-cut chunks of bunker. Rick Mola, co-owner of the shop, went down there on Saturday and caught a few fish to 25 pounds using the same method. No fluke in the Norwalk area yet, but the small bluefish have showed up with some of these fish even being caught off the Calf Pasture Point Pier.