I made the wrong decision

Pectoral Sandpipers

In my last post I discussed whether I should go hiking or birding on my days off this week (Fri and Sat). I also said, the worst case scenario when I went fishing on Wednesday I would be seeing albies way out but not catching any. Well, that is exactly what happened. I went to Narragansett on Wednesday. I caught a few blues. I saw some albies way out, but while I was there none were caught. My friend Dave caught one while I was checking out another spot (catching some bluefish).

On Thursday I bought groceries for New Hampshire. However, at the last minute I decided to stay home and fish instead. My reasons were three fold

1. Dave caught four albies on Thursday and fish were breaking for a quite a while.
2. I haven't seen Laurie in a week because she was visiting her father in South Carolina
3. I could watch the Thursday night Patriots game if I didn't go to New Hampshire.

Happily the Patriots destroyed the Texans. Happily Laurie came over to watch the game and we had fun. Friday, not so much fun

Ruddy Turnstone

I left my house before 6 am. I was in Narragansett very early. I tried multiple spots. I saw some albies very far out at two of them. I casted at each spot for 30 minutes. My goal today was to find fish. By 10:30 I hadn't seen any albies in over two hours. I kept going back to spots multiple times. The problem today was the lack of bait. I never saw any sign of bait around. There wasn't any bait balls, I didn't see any birds working. Other then the few albies way out at daybreak, nothing was feeding.

So at 10:30 I made a decision. I could either keep hoping for albies to show up which was certainly not a sure bet. Or I could take a few hours off from fishing and go birding. So that was what I did. I left Narragansett and drove to Westerly and walked out to Napatree Point. There wasn't a ton of birds but there was enough to make it worth my time. Besides the really common shorebirds I saw Ruddy Turnstones and Pectoral Sandpipers. I basically found the bunch of birds. I sat down, watched them, and took pictures for an hour.   While walking back to my car I spotted some Saltmarsh Sparrows.They were a lifebird for me. By far, the highlight of my day was the birding at Napatree.

Saltmarsh Sparrow

I got back to Narragansett at 2 pm. My friends Dave and Tom got there at about the same time. To make a long enough story a little shorter, I had one hit. Dave had two hits. I stayed fishing all the way until it was getting dark. I had one hit all day. Man, am I glad I went birding for a while. However, I absolutely should have gone to New Hampshire instead!

I obviously don't have any pictures of any fish but got some really good photos of birds and a decent sunset