How often are you skunked?

[Roger]

Originally Posted by Dinsdale

I realize that going after stripers may be an insurmountable challenge for me because without live/fresh bait and a willingness to be on the water alone at 3AM or rock hopping in a wetsuit in the surf in the wee hours, I'm pretty much out of luck.

Out of luck because you can't find fresh bait? Nothing could be further from the truth. OTOH, 2 years of tooling around the bay mid morning through mid afternoon won't do much for gaining experience. Neither will chasing fishing reports. You need to learn to fish.

I don't write this to put you down, I write this to give you hope. A few years ago, while being pretty successful fishing lots of areas from Westerly to Cape Cod, I decided I needed to re-learn Narragansett Bay. I passed up "sure thing" opportunities to focus on the bay. I did relatively poorly for the first couple seasons, but now can usually find some decent bass during daylight using artificials- fly and lures.

There are some good books that discuss fishing tackle and techniques for catching fish in the bay. Jim White's book - Monster Shallow Water Stripers is pretty good. To save gas and really kickstart your learning, I'd hire a light tackle guide to fish the bay. You'll learn where fish hold under certain conditions and methods to get them on your hook without using bait. (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Good luck and don't get discouraged.