After Monday’s succes on the bonito, I was itching to go again. This time Andrew and Al joined me. We left Niantic at 5 and headed out to Block Island. We made the run in less than an hour and were fishing as the sun came up.

It took a while for things to get going. There was quite a bit of bait spraying out of the water, but no real sign of bonito under them. Most of what we saw was small bluefish tearing through the pods of bait. We had no action till a little after 7, then the surface activity started. The bones were spread outr and in small pods. They didn’t stay up for long, but when they happened to pop up within casting distance, we had hits. Andrew had the first couple in the boat.

The higher the sun got, the tougher it got. The water was like glass. Albies and bones feed much better when there is a little chop on the surface. We picked away at a few more. They were really chowing down the silver sides. It was tough to match such a small bait but I knew I had picked the right lure when I had 3 hits in 6 casts… A small Sebile Magic Swimmer was the key to the last few fish in the boat.

I needed to get back to Connecticut Outfitters for the afternoon shift so we had to start heading back by 10. It was a short trip, but as always, Block produced for us yet again!

With the striper fishing slow and the bluefish still too thick, I haven’t been very motivated to fish the salt much since returning from Manitoba. With some recent reports of Bonito along the Rhode Island coast, Josh and I decided to take a look today. We launched from Barn Island and began the search before 6. The plan was to head straight to Block. We had a pretty good idea of where they would be and decided to be patient and see if they would come to us for once.  There were other boats in the area, but they were all on the move while hunting and eventually faded into the distance. We were all alone…

It started slowly at first. A few birds began to congregate. A few silversides hopping across the surface and then…

The bonito were blowing up in small pods all around us. We threw a bunch of casts with Deadly Dicks into the mayhem but never got touched. After 10 minutes, we switched over to plastics and instantly had blow ups. I was throwing a pearl 5″ Houdini and Josh was using a Super Fluke. We both hooked up and were promptly cut off. We had plenty of action, but started the morning by going 0 for 5. Luckily, things improved after that… Josh boated the first one.

I  got the next one…

Things got blurry after that. There were fish blowing up all around us for close to an hour. We had numerous explosions and several more hook ups. In typical tunoid fashion, the boat looked like a crime scene when all was said and done.

Here is a short video of one of Josh’s fish:

Bonito steaks are marinating in the fridge for tomorrow’s dinner!

It’s that time of year again… The F%$#ing bluefish have moved in pretty thick, making it tough to get a good drift in. There are still bass here, we are seeing them on the Humminbird holding tight to the bottom. Our average of 10 quality bass a day is now down to 2 or 3. The good news is that there is still plenty of bait around…

Monday’s charter was with Chris and his dad, Tony. We managed only one good sized bass in the boat. Here are a couple of pics…

Yesterday, I had the crew from Bookfishingtrips.com again. I warned them of the fishing conditions but they wanted to give it a shot anyways. They were valiant in their fight against the bluefish and were eventually rewarded with 3 bass. None of them were worthy of taking the camera out in the nasty conditions we had…

Better days are ahead!

I guess the end result is all that really matters when the sun sets on Niantic Bay. I had the guys from Bookfishingtrips.com out again today. To say we got off to a slow start was an understatement. I haven’t been skunked (No, I don’t count bluefish) in over 7 years. By 8:30 we STILL hadn’t put a fish in the boat and I was getting a bit worried. The guys had a few chances but never got any of them to the boat. Around 8, we ran back inside for a fresh round of porgy. Luckily, they were cooperating and we were back out in short order. A new reef, a different tide and some lively baits, thing HAD to improve… Boy, did they!

In the next 2 hours, the guys put a dozen fish in the boat. There were a couple that went 44 and 43″ and the rest were all the cookie cutter 40 to 41″ range with a couple just under that. The bluefish were present but managable all morning, I only lost 8 hooks today… Did I mention how much I hate bluefish????

Here is some video of the guys:

Here are a few pictures from the mornings action:

Today’s charter had to cancel at the last minute, I hope you get well soon Larry! With today being my day off from CT Outfitters as well, I figured it would be a great day to get my son out on the boat. I agreed to let him sleep in till 5 but that was it… It felt weird driving down to the boat in broad daylight!

The fog was pretty thick on the water, so we stayed local. We had a tide change around 8 or so, so things didn’t really start happening for a while. That gave us time to poke around and load up on big scup. The first spot we tried has been hot lately but we only managed one in the boat and dropped another. BJ had the first of the morning…

We hammered away at the reef for a while, but it just wasn’t happening, so we moved on… The next reef was much better. We fished in about 30 feet and were marking a decent pile of fish on the front side of the hill. We either hooked up or had hits on just about every drift for the rest of the morning. BJ ended up with a few nice fish as did I…

I had a no show this morning, so I used the time to fish some new areas on my own. I headed a bit farther east than normal. There was plenty of bait, I had no trouble getting my legal limit of ten. I fished structure from 12 to as deep as 40 and found fish throughout. There were no huge concentrations of fish but the action was consistent, enough so that I will definitely be spending some more time with my charters in these areas. I fished from 5:30 till about 9:30 and put 6 fish in the boat. Overall, they were smaller than what we’ve been averaging but I was more than happy with the new spots.

Everyone kows how much I hate bluefish… Well, they are finally here in force in the Niantic area.

I had father and son team Tom and Kevin on board today. We hit the water a little earlier than usual and had our bait by 5:30. We had slack around that time so it took a while for things to start up. Once the tide got rolling, the guys started boating fish…

Although Tom had his hands full, he did fine and had had the first 2 in the boat.

We had a couple more fish in that spot but it died off pretty quick. We moved a few miles away and set up in slightly deeper water. The blues were ferocious, but the bass were there too so we stuck it out. We lost a few rigs and plenty of bait, but the guys were rewarded with some outstanding bass.

A little before 10, the skies darkend up and we began to hear rumbles of thunder in the distance. Within a few minutes, there was a parade of boats flying past us heading for safety.  A quick check of the radar on my Blackberry showed why. We wasted no further time fishing and headed for the ramp at 50MPH. We managed to get the boat on thet railer and I was filleting my second bass when the storm hit. Even in my rain gear, I was soaked to the bone in no time at all. I haven’t seen that much lightning up close in a very long time…

Wednesdays are my day off from Connecticut Outfitters, and since I didn’t have a charter, Josh and I decided to head out to Block Island for a change of scenery. The plan was to throw eels in the rocks with spinning gear, then switch over to sea bass in some deper water. Josh had some numbers from his past trips that he wanted to try, so we plugged them into the Humminbird and headed out.

There was a good sized swell going when we got there with lots of 6 footers and the ocassional bigger ones so we didn’t want to get too close to shore. We fished in about 30 feet of water casting the eels up tide and letting them free swim to the bottom. This was a completely differnt style of fishing for me. We had a blast catching at least 18 bass before we ran out of eels. The biggest of the trip was a 47″ beast that put up a hell of a fight on light gear.
Here is a quick video clip of the fish:

Once the eels were gone, we turned our attention to sea bass. We fished from 70 feet all the way up to 45 or so and found them scattered around everywhere. Unfortunately, there weren’t many keepers but the action was good. I brought home just enough for dinner. We ended up catching a little bit of everything… Stripers, bluefish, fluke, scup, sea bass and sand sharks. Not a successful day by Josh’s standards but it was definitely a welcome change of pace and scenery for me.

Once again, I had the pleasure of having Mike Laptew AKA, the diving fisherman on board today. Mike and I have spent quite a bit of time on the water filming stripers over the last few years. Mike has produced some amazing video that he uses in his seminars and his DVD’s. The fishing has been outstanding lately, so ur hopes were high that we would get some HD quality footage of some big bass.

There had been rumors of bunker in the Niantic River. As everyone knows, there is no better bait on the planet for big bass than a live bunker.  I got up extra early (1:45) to allow ourselves some time to search for them. We looked for over an hour and only saw sporadic activity. Not enough to throw the cast net or snag so by 5 or so we were on our way out from under the bridges in search of plan B, otherwise known as scup.

We went to all the usual places and did manage to get some nice fish in the boat. These fish normally would have made any charter of mine happy but we had set our sights on bigger things. It just didn’t happen today. We had a ton of hits but had a lot of trouble hooking up, they bass were just not very aggressive in the way that they were hitting the baits. Mike worked his magic and managed to get his usual fantastic photos of some of the fish. Here are a few courtesy of Mike Laptew, www.laptewproductions.com