Norwich Bulletin

• Striped bass: This is prime time for schoolie stripers up and down the coast. Temps are still a tad cool for ocean fishing to be prime, but it won't be long. Joe Balint said a customer said he caught a 40-incher from the Thames that had two schoolie stripers in its stomach and it hit a live bunker. The schoolies were 14 and 18 inches.
• Bluefish: We are still a while away from the kind of action these voracious fish bring to the coast later in the season. However, the first blues showed up as usual a couple weeks ago and have been caught on a regular basis at the Millstone Point warm-water discharge, where Hillyer's Tackle reported a customer landed a 32-incher.
• Fluke: Fishing for this species is improving with every tide as they move into the region in hot pursuit of the squid that have come inshore to spawn.
• Winter flounder: There are still a few flatfish being caught from the waters around Niantic Bay and Pleasure Beach.
• Blackfish: The season is closed in Connecticut, but open in Rhode Island, so don't catch one in a boat and bring it back to Connecticut or risk getting busted.
• Bait: Menhaden are still in the Thames, Pawcatuck, and Mystic Rivers and most of the shoreline estuaries to the New York border.
• Freshwater Bass: With water temperatures reaching the low 60s in many places, largemouth bass will be going on their spawning beds. Shallow, small ponds always heat up sooner and have earlier spawning periods than deeper cooler waters.
• Trout: Water levels, which were at flood stage in area rivers on opening day less than a month ago, are now down to fishable levels, lower in some small, fast-flowing streams. Trout fishermen are doing well on all fronts. Pete Butterfield of Boondocks said he's been doing well fly-fishing in local areas with size 18 Hemmingway and Henryville Special patterns.
• Other species: Shad are in the upper Shetucket River. Steve Gephard of the DEP said about 1,000 have already passed over the Greenville Dam's fish lift and the first few travelers are expected to reach the newly operational Tunnel Hill Dam fish elevator on the Quinebaug River any day now. (Bob Sampson)