TheDay - There's Competition For Hot Spots Between Tourists, Regulars

• The summer crunch is here: our towns are crowded with tourists from all over the country, competing with locals when it comes time to get gas during the busiest parts of the day. Included in their travels were lots of fishing trips, taking advantage of near-perfect weather at mid-week.
• Hillyers Tackle advised all looking for keeper fluke to fish in 75-100 feet — or deeper— at places like the Bloody Grounds, Two Tree Channel or off Black Point. Whole squid on a two-hook rig or large smelt or other bigger baits are the ways to get the doormats versus a day with all throwbacks.
• Best stripers catches have been after dark with fish over 30 pounds on the scales as a result. Schoolie bass are around the mouths of the rivers or the rocks at mouth of the Thames taking plugs or small plastic lures. The same could be said for casting around Little Gull on certain days at sunrise.
• Two of the people from the store fished with live porgies around Valiant Shoal during a crowded time on Tuesday evening, catching some large bass. Porgy catches have been good to excellent at White Rock and Two Tree Island. Black fishing isn't too, too bad considering the time of year. Try in the deeper water on some rocky bottom outside Black Point.
• Small to medium blues were the norm from The Race from most of the week along with a mix of blues and schoolies caught at sunrise around Race Rock. Hickory shad can be caught at times in the Niantic River on shad darts or small white grubs on a lead head. Blue crabbing is good right now but the snapper blues just yet are pretty small.
• Capt. Al Anderson said his last two trips offshore weren't all that good. Over the last weekend, he started off catching some schoolies and blues off Southeast Light of Block then went out to 30 fathoms, trolling roughly from west of The Dump back over to south of Block Island for catch of mahi to 16.8 pounds. The next day they trolled down wind in a northeast wind, catching three very small bluefin and lots of green bonito at roughly 14550 x 43750. During the last trip Al said they got three or four mystery hits on the trolled lures, fish that burned off some line then came free each time.
• Fluking was good on some of the weekdays said Capt. Don's in Charlestown, people catching shorts and keepers just outside the pot line in 35-40 feet of water off the Fire District Beach at Weekapaug. There are schoolie bass in Quonny Pond for the small boater and fluke of various sizes moving in and out of the pond.
• Don at King Cove said fluking was steady since last report at all the usual spots plus some keepers from the 23-foot hump off the East breakwater at Stonington. Sea bass catches (very good on the table) are fair to good for a few days then drop off to almost nothing for the next three days. Porgies are almost on any rock pile from Latimer Light to Weekapaug.
• Light tackle boats found lots of bass on times around the Watch Hill Reefs but the fish were feeding on very tiny bait and very hard to fool unless you used a tiny fly to match the forage. Biggest striper of the week was another 50 for Ken Zwirko, this one a 53-pounder fooled with bunker. Not long ago, Ken weighed in a hefty 58-pounder from the reefs.
• Shore anglers are catching some schoolies early in the day at Stonington Point and some blackfish from the Monsanto jetty plus a few keepers on a weekly basis from the Stonington commercial dock.
• Shaffers Boat Livery said they saw steady numbers of fluke coming back from 30-50 feet of water around Isabella Beach, 40 feet at Misquamicut and also a catch of six keepers by one angler drifting off Ram Island. Fluke season closes in state waters on Sept. 5, leaving roughly five weeks of fishing.
• Lots of people are catching lots of porgies from the rock piles in Fishers Island Sound and along the shore in the Mystic River with small blues.
• Folks that like to cast lures from their boats found very finicky fish on the Watch Hill Reefs, small and medium bass on the surface chasing something very small that made them very hard to fool with standard poppers and plastic lures. We have a full moon coming up on Sunday that should produce some larger bass after dark with live eels.
• This writer fished on Wednesday with Capt. Jack Fiora of East Haddam on his 42-footer that he normally keeps in the Mystic River. But the Saturday before, Jack ran his boat up to Scituate, Mass., for fishing and diving up there. On our day we caught a mix of tasty haddock, cusk (great in fish chowder), hake and small cod in 305 feet of water off Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod. Prior to our trip, Jack and friends went diving on the local wrecks, one of them pulling up a 13-pound lobster that took up almost a whole cooler.
• Capt. Brad Glas of the Hel-Cat said the fishing in and around The Race was slow at times last week but as the week wore on, the numbers of blues showed a slow increase along with a jump in striped bass. The evening fluke trips have been “sensitive” to drift conditions. If you get the right drift, the fishing can be fabulous. Biggest fish of the week went to Claude Vinhaterio with a 24-pound striper.
• Bob's Rod & Tackle said the Thames River had been invaded by smaller porgies making their way up as far as Montville. People are catching them on small pieces of worms or squid but not many were big enough to keep. Tube and worm trollers in the river caught mainly schoolies stripers with a few just over the legal limit. Fluke reports are good one day and then very poor for the people unlucky enough to try their hand the next time out.
• You might catch some bigger bluefish in the lower part of the Thames on chunk baits on the bottom said the Fish Connection. Crabbing is good right now in the Thames. One gent stopped by the store on Wednesday morning to say he caught 40 the night before using a light and net to scoop them up. The stretch from Ocean Beach to Mumford Cove has lots of short fluke but keepers to be sure.
• Boaters from Old Saybrook caught medium bass trolling in The Race on the ebb tide this week reported Mark at River's End Tackle. Small and medium blues took diamond jigs and bucktails in The Gut plus some bigger ones were caught chunking from shore at Saybrook Point.
• Mark also got reports about medium and a few large fluke from the edges of the channel along the lower Connecticut River when boat traffic wasn't too harsh. Porgies are around the usual spots mentioned in the reports including the rocky humps off Cornfield Point. Crabbing is fair to very good at the DEP Dock in Old Lyme, Oyster River and around the Causeway. (Tim Coleman)