Great day at Block yesterday (Friday)
 

Every fall, my college friends get together for a day of fishing out of Pt Judith, fishing at Block. To me, snapping parachute jigs behind 350 feet of wire, is about as much fun as being sentenced to spend the day on a chain gang. But the action was non-stop as long as the tide was moving. We caught a ton of sea bass and scup (Spence gave me a killer recipe for grilling whole sea bass) and we got a visit from a large leatherneck(?) turtle, that was a first for me. Look at that nasty "afternoon chop", I bet the seas were up to 4 inches by 3PM, and we were in tshirts and shorts for awhile. Amazing day in a beautiful place.

Highly recommend the C-Devil, great captain and mate.

Hard to tell from that picture but it looks like a leatherback to me. I've seen some huge ones out there.

Nice I 2nd that wire jigging 1 fish and your smoked Glad you had a great day

I've seen them offshore, never saw one as close as sw ledge
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Yup leatherback seen them a bunch of times this time of year when I use to dive off of the SW corner.
Pretty big and docile creatures.
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I was on the Block most of last week along with a few guys from this site. We have very tough fishing until the wind died on Wednesday night. Thursday was good but you had to work for the fish. This was in the surf not boat.

Did you charter a boat to dive out there? I am certified, never been diving out there, would love to see all the fish. In a couple of years, the wind towers might be a good dive spot.

Spent the day codfishing on Coxes out on the south and sw edges.

Did poorly as it seemed did everyone else around us. Lots of sea bass but they are closed in MA (is it still open in RI????).

By the way, does anyone have numbers for the wrecks out there? I'd like to try again but the wreck symbols on the GPS are not accurate from what I can tell.

Don't have the numbers handy (they are on the boat) but most of the wrecks are on the north edge. Many of them have collapsed.

If any point you can write them down for me I'd appreciate it greatly.
If you prefer not, either for fishing or other reasons, I understand.

That aside, I am curious as to your thoughts why codfishing was so slow last friday. There seemed to be plenty of bait and seabass, as well as plenty of boats which I take as a sign fishing had been decent (although I suppose it might just be RI guys targeting seabass instead........but that seems like a long way to run for that).
Are the cod on the move off the ledge into closer/shallower waters (i.e., brown's, swledge, east grounds, sw shoal) as the water cools? I remember catching them by the dozen while trolling for bass at cuttyhunk years ago and used to jig for them later in October on SW shoal.
Does competition now with seabass drive them off into deeper water?
Are the cod there and it is just that the seabass get to the jigs/bait first?
Or is it just cod being cod and simply not biting on the day in question.

Fishing for seabass the last several years has reawakened my zest for vertical jigging. Although I have the wrong boat for it I had hoped to pick away at codfish this fall when weather permits.

My grandfather (God rests him easy) held me by the feet over the gunnel when I was 5 or so to bring one of those turtles (obviously a baby) on deck. Cutest thing I ever held. I bet Ricky remembers that. He was probably 8 then.

Remind me in the spring and I'll send you some numbers, they are on the boat and I don't intend to get back to her until springtime.

Were you jigging? For some reason, during the summer bait outproduces jigs out there by about 10 to 1. I don't usually fish out there after the middle of Sept., that's when the doggies move in and make bait fishing impossible. You're right for sea bass you'd have to be nuts to run to Cox's from RI, they are all around Block Island right now. But in the end who really knows why fish do what they do? If I had to speculate, I'd say that the doggies are harassing them and the sea bass are beating them to the jigs.

Thanks. The guy I was with fished bait but to no avail. No dogfish, however. I jig but use small wide butterfly jigs. Did pretty well on decent sized cod with them relative to the boats around me the prior trip at the end of August. Think I'll retry closer in (i.e., SW shoal) in a week or so.

Browns has some
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Thanks, will try it next week.
Regretting not going today. The bass fishing was slow and albies only a bit better.