Latest Ocean State Fishing Reports
08/17/08
Three of us caught nine legal fish, with only one really big one today, not nearly as good as the last two trips off Second Beach. Not even as many shorts, and more trash fish. Summertime Bob
08/15/08
I blew work off Friday and caught the tail end of the morning tide at Block Island. Started out drifting with eels at the SW ledge in the vicinity of the "peanut". Two drifts equalled 4 bluefish and 4 chopped up eels. With time ticking before the current died out I then started bouncing from rock pile to rock pile spending 5-10 minutes max at each before moving on. Soon enough I found what I was looking for on a rock pile just west of the R4 buoy. She was about 43" fork length and weighed in a hair under 30 lbs on my boga. I circled back around to try the drift again but by that time the current had died. I then turned to trolling tube & striper strip. Starting out at Dories Cove I trolled in 20' - 30' of water all the way around the south side and up the east side to Ballards. No takers on the tubes but the south side between Black Rock and Mohegan Bluffs was alive with surface action close in to the beach. As I trolled along I was hooking up with bluefish in the 2-5 lb range on just about every cast with a popper. Its alot more fun catching bluefish this way than when they are chopping up your eels. As an added bonus I pulled a couple school stripers about 5-7 lbs out from the fracas. Dare I say it sort of reminded me of fall. On the way back in I gave fluking a shot. Varous depths out in front of Brenton Point. Nothing. Two shorts and a keeper (22.5") in front of Castle Hill (Pirate Cove) in 50'-60' feet of water. Varous depths at Austin Hollow and Dutch Island (both sides) also nothing even though there was a decent drift.
08/12/08
In between rain storms, three of us caught limits of Fluke Tuesday. About one half of the fish were 22 inches or better, but only one in the six pound range. For the limits, we repeated the same drift in 60 to 65 feet of water East of the fish trap off of Second Beach at Newport... since I didn't know the area we just looked for this depth and picked a spot. No other boats were in sight. Squid rigs tipped with both squid and the belly stripped from our first legal fish were the ticket and that out performed my traditional two Spro jig set up. Probably caught at least four to one on throw backs to keepers with lots of the shorts being close enough to measure. Summertime Bob
08/09/08
Three of us left snug harbor at 5:30 am friday morning on a quest for cod at the southeast corner of coxes ledge. 3-4 foot seas kept us at 17-18 knt. steam to the grounds. At around 7:00 we were anchored up and caught fish right away. We set our own minimum length for keepers at 25", instead of 22" current legal size. We were using clams on standard 2 hook store bought cod rigs with up to 9oz of lead to hold bottom. There were some charter boats around us drifting and using jigs but they had very few hook ups. We moved and anchored again 2 more times in the same area and quit at 2:00. We ended up with 24 in the box,most fish in the 7-10 lb. range but did catch 2 fish 31 and 32 lbs.Fishing was great but the lighting and thunderstorms sucked!
08/10/08
Fished Point Judith Saturday from 8am to 1:30pm. Tallied about 12 fish. 3 keepers from 21" to 23". Most fish were around 19". Long drifts with small pockets of fish. Fished from 60 to 50 feet out in front of the cottages with a very slow pick. Moved West and set up drift just East of Nebraska shoals in 45-50' of water and had better action. Beautiful seas in the morning turned ugly in the afternoon. Good day on the water but the fish count is significantly off from last year. Just my own personal observation. Last season it was almost guaranteed that we would catch between 20 to 50 fish each. We probably ran a short to keeper ratio of 10:1 but it was just fun to catch. This season if I can catch 6 fish in a day I feel like I am doing well.
07/26/08
We had the same good fortune on Sat. We threw some spreaders out on route to a sharking spot and caught a few right away. After sharking we decided to do it again and the action was non-stop. We went 15 for 15. Best day for schoolies in a long time so close to Block. We were at the Gully. They hit everything but both purple and green seemed to do the best. We used single lures, chains and spreader bars. The fish liked all of them.
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