RI Year?
 

Just wondering how you RI casters made out this year. Was speaking to some of the Watch Hill gang on the CB from Montauk and they said they had pretty much the same season we did, which was not good.

Hi Bill,

Didn't get out but reports were fair - some good some not so good

Good year on the boat. 2 over 45#, many in the 30s' and a ton over 20#. Lots of sea bass and scup but NO Fluke.

same old story... Steady decline in both quality and quantity for the last 4-5 years despite equal, if not increased effort. i am mainly wetsuiting rocky shoreline spots.
Did patterns change? are they staying offshore? Did I get worse at fishing?
or are there simply fewer and fewer fish to go around to fill in hundreds of miles of coastline... Whatever the reason, I am working way too hard for too little, year after year.

I personally don't believe that the striper population is as desolate as most others on these boards. It's far from a record high, but the picture is not as empty as some paint it.

Fish have fins....they move around, they change their staging locations based on many factors. They change their migration paths without notice...which of course, reflects on where they normally stage or take short or season-long residence.

We on the other hand, are more creatures of habit. We fish the same spots based on many factors...our own personal logs, network of friends, or the interblab reports.

Picture our vast coastline.....now picture yourself standing in the surf somewhere....think of your range, think of your offering, think of your timing. Place yourself and your actions in perspective to the enormous areas that these fish could be at any given time.

Could just be......they weren't where you tried that night.....or the next night, or the next night. Sometimes bad timing shadows our season. Doesn't mean you don't know what you're doing, should have zigged when you zagged...sometime it's just bad luck (or rather timing if you don't believe in luck).

Many others are reporting good numbers.
Tough to get an accurate report of an area based on an internet site. How many people slayed them this season but do not post, do not brag, do not share their numbers?

Or maybe I'm wrong....and a moratorium is in our midst???
:hs:

I don't even consider myself a "striper" fisherman any longer, I'd rather be fishing for BSB, tog or fluke, but I did see a ton of small schoolies last year. Fluke this year was nothing like last year, but black sea bass and tog was strong.

I didn't fish RI as much as I normally do but found it to be a tough year. Good spots, good conditions and blanks at times. Block island was better than it has been in the past 7 years. Seems like th fish were concentrated more than in past seasons. Either there were a lot of fish or there was nothing.
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If you like catching rats on every surf outing then it was fantastic :rolleyes:

Worst year for size or quality for me and few buddies in RI.

Lots of blanked nights, some nights covering 4-6 spots thru the tide with 2 guys throwing mixed offerings including live eels.

Every few 20lb class fish around

Tried my tried and true spots and explored a lot of new areas hoping to find productive water with little success

So many small fish everywhere which I guess is a great sign of things to come, I mean watching schools of 10-14” fish, by the 100s tear up small bait.

Bonito and albie fishing was the best I’ve ever experienced including new pbs in both species, pink albie snax were the bait to have, Shimano nasci 5000 ($99) held up thru everything (2nd season as my schoolie and albie reel)

Caught albies from the beach in the bay, way up, seen em out in front of Providence hurricane barrier for like 3 days, just crazy that went that far up.

So I’d say the striper season was 5 out of 10 in RI, albie was a 10/10
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This year I fished more then the previous two combined, This was the best year I had in 20 years for the amount of fish I caught from shore, unfortunately it was the worst for fish over 28 inches. Having said that I really didn't work for larger fish this year. I did not hit the canal even once and yes I heard all the stories. I did not fish a single outflow but was told they were not as good as years past, I didn't fish a single night. The future looks good.

Spent a lot of time fishing Rhody after the Derby. Size of fish was small. Only had a few keeper sized fish with none over 40 in. After the Canal bite this I was hoping to find some good nights off the rockpiles on the drops. The fish that I found were way at the end of the drift. Fished from Little river to the CG station a few times with sparse numbers. Firemans beach had a bunch of 12 to 14 in fish but it was mainly a boat thing. Had a lot of time with spots all to myself as most of the locals had hung it up. Caught several albies on pencils and not 1 blue. Strange fall run most places that I fished this season.

It seems to me that Rhody is feeling the decline more than any where else. I lived in RI for 9 years and moved there originally bc the surffishing was so good around 2006 it started to go down hill and has gotten worse and worse ......meanwhile other areas to the north and even south are experiencing better fishing then they are in RI,year after year the fishing is getting rough everywhere