The Day, 6/24/06

1. Black fish season opened in Connecticut waters last week, giving people more options for their day off.
2. The first reports have been very positive with two outstanding fish caught from the beach. Capt. Howard Beers at Hillyers Tackle said they weighed in a 14.8-pounder caught by Bob Silva fishing from Pequot Avenue along the Thames River. A few days later they weighed in another fish the same size, this one caught by an unknown angler between the bridges in Niantic.
3. In other news, they heard about a few more keeper fluke from the home waters but better results for keepers from Rhode Island or the south side of Fishers Island. Yesterday morning three fellows stopped by for ice to take care of their catch of six medium stripers caught early in the day not too far from the mouth of the Niantic River.
4. Al Golinski of Misquamicut reported pretty slow going for large bass on the Watch Hill Reefs. His best day in three trips was two fish, one of those a 15-pounder. One morning he ended up with a 31-pounder and almost 20 live bunker left in his well. He ran down to the Rhode Island beaches on another morning for a nice mess of fluke to 4.8 pounds. The beaches there are full of small fluke but if you fish through them you can cull a fair amount of keepers. Scup are showing up on most of the area rockpiles.
5. Capt. Al Anderson had good to excellent trips for small to medium stripers in the late afternoon and evenings at Block Island from the inner bar at the North Rip down the west side to the Hooter Buoy. His catches ranged from 23 to 39 inches, averaging about three to five keepers per outing. Last Friday two fly rodders had fast action with 33 bass to 22 pounds on squid flies in a strong ebb tide that took quite a few rpms just to stay up ahead of the rip. On Saturday evening they used spin rods and bucktails with twister tails to catch another load of smaller bass, the presence of the fish given away by loads of gulls wheeling and diving in the white water behind the rip.
6. We weighed in bass to 40 inches said King Cove in Stonington, those fish caught on the tube and worm or live eels trolled from kayaks in and outside of Stonington Harbor. Terns were working over much smaller bass around Sandy Point some mornings with a few bluefish mixed in. Casters had some success early in the day at the Watch Hill reefs with smaller stripers also but not as many as the week prior. Fluking remains a matter of culling through X amount of shorts for Y number of keepers. One encouraging sign of late were a few smaller keepers landed around White Rock.
7. Cheryl at Shaffers observed most of the boats in their marina have switched over to chasing fluke. Last Saturday she heard about mainly shorts but Sunday was a different story. Her brother Allen landed eight keepers off Isabella Beach and others came back from various spots with much better results than the day before. Capt. Bruce Meyers weighed in a 9.4-pound blackfish caught on a striper charter using lead line and whole squid for bait.
8. Capt. Jack Balint of the Fish Connection said he's been getting good numbers of smaller bass looking for fish on top in the mornings between the Mystic shoreline from the Monastery over to Sandy Point. Bigger fish were caught around Wicopesset Island and Valiant Shoal after dark. The best area for fluke remains off the south side of Fishers Island in 40-50 feet of water. To date very few keeper summer flounder were caught off Groton or the west end of Fishers Island Sound.
9. Stephanie Cramer joined her fly rod club at Quonny Pond on Saturday, finding the expected summer crowds and presumably poorer fishing because of all the people and noise. She got tag returns from four of her small stripers tagged in the Thames during the winter. One was re-caught in the Hyannis River on Cape Cod, a second from Truro, also on the Cape and a third and fourth from Point Judith and Narragansett Bay.
10. Capt. Brad Glas of the Hel-Cat was right on time with his weekly e-mail stating they had good fishing in The Race during the week and a bit of a slow down over the weekend, nothing new there. They had both blues and stripers on board, the bluefish of mixed sizes and in consistent quantities; the bass were for the most keepers with only one day showing a lot of shorts. Big fish of the week was a 20-pound bass caught by Dave Coons of Sheffield, Mass.
11. Capt. Kyle Douton at J&B Tackle said he fished The Race on Wednesday evening for pretty poor results. He left before dark but his dad in their charter boat stuck it out for a decent catch but nothing until the last light was out of the western sky, sometime around 9:30 p.m. Kyle was back in The Race the next morning for good action but all were throwback bass. They've been using bucktails when the tide is running hard and eels when it slacks. Sharking has been very poor to date with some small makos. A couple of the shark boats did connect with 40-pound bluefin out in the Horns trolling with very small Jet Heads.
12. River's End Tackle in Old Saybrook said the people in small boats casting in the lower Connecticut River at dusk and daybreak had very inconsistent fishing. If you can find live bunker there are large bass on some of the reefs from Southwest to Outer Bartletts. Only short fluke were caught to date in the Connecticut River. Black fishing is quite good, drawing lots of attention as porgy catches were only fair so far. One boat dropped some sandworms around an inshore rockpile and caught medium tautog but also three winter flounders around 3 pounds that had to be tossed back because the season is closed until next year.
13. We might add some other news from other sources. Since last week's report there were five bass over 50 pounds caught from Block Island waters. Four of those were on live eels fished deep at Southwest Ledge, the other on a live hickory shad from the island's south side. People that trailer their boats might find a source of live hickory shad around the state pier in the Point Judith Salt Pond or further outside the West Gap of the harbor.
14. Fluke news from Green Hill east to the center wall of the harbor is about the same as our end: lots of shorts and some keepers in 40 to 60 feet of water. At times the small bluefin popped up on the south side of Block and in the Mud Hole with some caught on very small Jet Heads trolled on very light leaders. [Tim Coleman, The Day]