aqualung

Met 'The Shark' at Galilee boat ramp at 6:00 AM launch was buzzing with activity and was very lucky to find a spot to park the trailer. This was an exploratory trips of sorts since I have never launched, navigated or fished in this areas waters before. We headed out and as we maneuvered through the channel to open water on the west passage of the break walls Mark informs me he forgot the spearing in the freezer. We can deal with that problem when the time comes, I had a half a pack from the last outing. As we started to work our way east I notice a group of boats working a particular area off one of the break walls in about 50 feet of water, the 50 foot mark has been working for me for the most part lately. So we rigged up and used a squid and spearing sandwich in hopes of catching the toothy critters Fluke. We made several drift and would say gave it about an hour and a half and just could not get any hook ups other than sea robbins and skates. I decided we should head more east after reading Big O's earlier post. As we motored Mark says we will be going by his families cottage and maybe we could swing into an area of beach and have his wife deliver the spearing, this particular area is not really a beach as most think of a beach, it is a small opening that is not completely rocks like the area that surrounds it ....so I carefully work my way in towards shore, noting the large boulders on the FF. I figure with the 2-3 foot waves breaking the area landing the boat was not an option, I suggested to Mark take a Bunker snagging hook, tie it on and cast it to the clearing, we were about 40-50 yards out then his wife could then just hook the bag of spearring on and retrieve it...Wha..Laaa worked like a charm. OK so now that little adventure was behind us off we go once again in search of an area that might hold some fluke. We ended up outside of Jamestown, could see the Newport bridge quite clearly, we found another bunch of boats which appeared to be fluke fishing and gave it a go. Again fishing was very slow, but after one move to start our drift again I get a whack and a nice 13' black sea bass comes over the side, I was hoping that would continue, if we couldn't find the fluke, sea bass would do...but that wasn't happening either. After a couple hours of that...I said to Mark let's head back to where we started in the first place and maybe try going a little further west even outside Charlestown breachway, he agreed and of we went. Wasn't very long on our trip back and I noticed a large flock of birds working, had to go check it out, saw fish breaking everywhere. We both rig up with some plugs and toss into the mayhem, bamm...we are both on, after we both had a good battle over the side come the bluefish. We had a ball with these fish for about 30-45 minutes caught maybe 8 or so and said lets leave these crazy bluefish and go catch our targeted species the Fluke. We were passing the area where we originally fished earlier and saw a good number of boats working the area again, so had to give it a shot again. Sure enough, with the tide change and a breeze blowing now that seemed to be ticket, we had fish on every drift, many shorts in the 18-19 inch range, but I was getting lucky and ended up boating 4 keepers with the largest at 24" Mark was struggling a bit but came on late with 2 back to back 24 inchers. All and all a beautiful day on the water and is always exciting to explore new waters, we pulled out at about 6PM, that's a full day ;)

I bought another boat the other day and needed to give it a test run so Mark 'theshark' and I made a Fluke trip out of it. We only had the afternoon to work with We stopped at Hillyer's tackle to buy some frozen Spearing, I had plenty of nice squid that I caught a couple weeks back (see squid trip) We launched out of the Niantic, very nice during the middle of the week in the middle of the day, no crowds to deal with. We headed to the Millstone outflow to see if anyone was catching any blues or stripers, there were a half dozen boats fishing the rip, saw only one small Blue fish boated so off we went to Two tree island to give fluking a shot. The tide was pretty dead and there was basically no breeze to speak of so our drifts were far from optimum, I could have power drifted I suppose but chose not to. We where using spinner type rigs with colored beads and bucktail tipped with strips of Squid and Spearing in about 35 FOW (feet of water) made a couple drifts and I don't think we even caught a skate or sea robin. I wanted to give the boat a good long run so we decided to head to the race, we found a small fleet of boats by Little Gull Island, the tide was running strong at this point. We saw a few fish being boated don't know if they were blue's or stripers, even though we were not geared up for this type of fishing Mark and I put on a couple diamond jigs that were too light for conditions but gave it a try just the same. We could never find bottom the water was too deep and fast our lines would scope way out we still tried in hopes of some suspended fish but in the end there was NO LOVE! We headed back in and on the way we decided to give Bartlett's reef a try for fluke, once again we used the spinner rigs with the bait mentioned in about 45 FOW During the first drift we both had a couple hits but no hook ups. Second drift Mark finally hooks up and I net a nice 21" Fluke for him, ahhh skunk is out of the boat! Sun was going down and we had time for a one more drift before we headed back but nothing doing. Nice afternoon on the water even if we didn't smack a bunch of fish, the boat ran great for the first time out ;)

Hit the Thames with a couple buddies of mine in the boat on a very crisp December morning.
(See the frost on the boat)
Arrived just at about High tide 8:00
Once we managed to launch through all the debris and ice.
This has been a constant problem now with those barges there.
Well long story short. Action was hot in the A.M for the shore guys at the Cop shop, boat guys around the marina docks.
Later in the day the action shifted down to the Condo's for both the shore and boat guys.
I managed the only keeper to come into the boat today at 29"
The fish had the feed bag on for sure today.

Did a charter for some Pollock with a group of guys on one of the Eastman's Boats. They are located in Seabrook New Hampshire.
Headed down with a buddy of mine at 3:15 in the morning. Boat sailed at 7 2 hour ride out.
First drop we both pull a couple smaller fish over the rail. Captain, "Reel em up, we are going to adjust our location" 10 minutes later it was lock n load, fish were flying over the rail, this was non stop for at least 2 hours. Most everyone was using jigs. I was using a jig with a Blue teaser that was working great. Honestly anything with a hook on it if you could get it down to the bottom would have caught fish. My buddy Matt and I ended up filling one of those huge coolers and 2 fish totes.

Headed out again in search of togs with a couple buddies Matt and Bob. Got a late start on the water by 10:30 with a Perigee tide at High. The air temp was about 60 and the water temp 56 and flat as could be. We fished the mouth of the Thames and a couple reefs east of the Thames. Matt had the hot hand again, both Bob and I struggled are way through, we limited out about 3 PM. Green crabs cut in half was the bait used. Did a quick try at some sea bass but no luck.

Headed out with a Buddy with a bucket of green crabs, on a cool breezy November day. We managed to catch some nice fish. Fish were in shallow water 10-12'
Man! are Blackfish a tasty treat