RHODE ISLAND: Striped Bass in the Rips
Posted on August 14th, 2008
Healing from the third annual Rhode Island trip organized by Jeremy Cameron of Flies and Fins. (Here’s Jeremy’s Youtube vid from the inaugural event.) No tuna this year but one or two guys (not me) hooked into the maddeningly sporadic bonito. Every day a heavy afternoon bass bite saved the day. Thank Jeebus or Satan or whoever for those striped bass. Without them, there would have been blood.
Tagged: fishing, rhode island, striped bass, striper
Hell yeah, Pete!
Rhode is the only NE state I haven’t fished yet, I gotta get over there one of these days
It was a blast, DT. The bass there are so much more prevalent in fly-friendly areas than my home waters of the Western Sound this time of year.
By the way, glad to see you came back into the blogosphere. We still gotta hit carp one of these days. Where did the damn summer go?
pete – great trip … lot’s of fish … to say that the “stripers were on the rip” would be an understatement .. thank god for the bonito and the stripers and .. the lack of bluefish mixed in with the stripers .. kinda strange that the little pocket in the rip that was our honey hole .. was filled with stripers and not one of us caught a bluefish in that section of the rip … great trip, had a ton of fun.
Yeah, and glad to see you all catch bonito, if not me…Gunning 55 mph hour in a striped-down old Wahoo…gotta get you at least one seat!
Went fishing Saturday September 20th, 2008, What a day! I woke up at 3:20 and immediately called Shawn, my friend of 19 yrs and counting… Drove to his dads house to get the trailer, then drove to Shawn’s house in CT. (1hour, twenty minutes) Drove to Narragansett, Monahan’s Dock. ( 1 hour, 15 mins) here we are with a 14 foot aluminum Jon boat, loading in. The water is very choppy; I look off to the far left at the beach and see 4 foot waves crashing. (Thinking ahh, we’ll just stay away from there. Shawn knew right away it wasn’t going to be good. We say what the heck, and go for it. We got 100 yards from the dock just passed the wall on the right. (We didn’t know what was around the corner). And crash a wave slams us. That’s when we knew! We then turned around and headed back to the dark with waves nailing us from behind. By the way, we had Minn Kota 50 lbs of thrust battery operated motor. We weren’t going anywhere fast with that current. We come into the ramp riding a wave Crash, more water comes in. I jump out pull the boat up the ramp then Shawn had no choice but to jump out. We then dragged it up the ramp and pulled the plug and let it drain. Then got the hell out of Dodge! We were soaked and our feet squished as we walked. We could not stop laughing! We decided on another area in East Providence. On a hunch on some information we learned in Pawtucket, RI at a very popular spot. Over crowded and over fished. They were catching Blue fish with a rumor of a 30 pound striper the night before. So we headed out. (9am 3hours later) and we knew high tide was at noon. GAME ON! We strolled into a cove and saw the water boiling. We casted out and bang! Bang! Bang! all three lines got hit. One line was on a chunk behind us. It was intense! I wish I had the camera ready at that point. (Next time I’m planning on bringing a tripod and attaching it to the bow) We both got our fish on board and the one behind us got off. The video tells the rest. This was the best time fishing we have ever had. In total we landed 8 blues and 4 striped bass. One Bass was a keeper at 28 inches. We didn’t have a scale but we estimate the fish to be between 20 and 50 ponds. My longest fight was with a blue fish for 45 minutes! What a day!
Nice looking Bass,similar striped body to the Tiger fish in Africa.How deep were you fishing to catch that Bass?
Anywhere from right on the surface to about 15′ deep.