Belated New England report « Atlantic Coast surf and shore fishing

Belated New England report

I suppose I really should post something about our recent week-long vacation to Charlestown, Rhode Island. This blog purports to be about fishing the Atlantic seaboard and who the hell knows when I’ll get back to New England to fish.

This was my third trip fishing “South County”, Rhode Island (that’s basically the contiguous section from the Connecticut state line to Narragansett Bay). In the off-season, its your basic surf fishing paradise, with way too many super spots to hit in a week. In-season, its just too damn hard to get on the beach – tons of parking restrictions, private beaches (private! can you imagine that? NOT in North Carolina!), and other random hassles.

My first trip was after a conference in Providence mid-late October 2007. How was it? How about the best surf-fishing I’ve ever experienced for three consecutive days. It seemed like every beach I hit had a blitz of some kind in-progress.

This looks promising (look close-birds working)!

light tackle action - always a blast

some dude hooked up at Weekapaug Point

Ron from Maine hooks up at Weekapaug

Poppers!

this guy was hungry

stripers too

It culminated in an awesome all-out blitz of big blues and mixed stripers in a hard, pre-front, on-shore SW blow Saturday afternoon (this is their kick-ass fall wind condition on these south facing beaches).

saturday's epic blitz

yeah, these photos kinda suck with wind and rain in my face, fish all over the place and my camera crapping out on me

(yeah, those last two photos kinda suck with wind and rain in my face, fish all over the place and my camera crapping out on me, but trust me it was kickin)

Fast forward to my between-jobs hiatus last summer, which was fairly typical slow summer fishing, although I did get a keeper striper wading a bridge that has yet to fail to yield at least a couple schoolies every time I’ve hit it.

Sarah and I (and the four dogs) trekked up to Charlestown September 14.

four (4) dogs

Fishing started out well for me, catching 6-8 schoolie stripers at the ever-dependable, aforementioned bridge our first night in town. The rest of the trip was slow, with a few small stripers along the surf on the trek out to Napatree Point (a great walk fishing with the dogs), and a nice sunset run of 2-3 pound blues on popping plugs at Weekapaug Point one evening. I dropped a few nicer bass drifting live eels at The Bridge very late one evening (or early one morning depending on your perspective).