Poseidon's Gift

For the last week I hadn't gotten a chance to go fishing until tonight. During little league playoffs this year it is a double elimination format. This means you don't find out when your next game is until after you've won or lost because you go into a different bracket depending on the outcome.

For this week at least, trying to make plans for the evening has been impossible. I got a tip from my friend Dave that a spot we fish in Warwick ( Conimicut Point) has been red hot with keeper striped bass. My plan was to go last night but the game ended late and I wanted to get in the water by dark. I never would have made it ( I planned on fishing well after dark, but wanted to fish the twilight too.)

Today we had a game scheduled but it got rained out. It was raining really hard where I live and the forecast for the night was showers all night. Still, I couldn't stop myself. I was jonesing to fish so bad, I got in the car knowing I'd have rain and wind pelting my face. The whole ride to Warwick I was not caring about how heavy the rain was coming down, I had visions of a lot of stripers chasing a lot of bait and me having the place to myself ( who else is dumb enough to fish in that weather?)

I put my waders and raincoat on in the car when I got there so except for my face and hands I stayed reasonably dry I walked out to the point, sure enough it was empty. I started casting into the wind. About 15 minutes into my fishing two other guys got into the water. I was impressed to say the least. About 45 minutes and no hits between the three of us, the wind and rain picked up. The wind had to be at least 30 miles an hour and it started to pour. It was dark but I saw the silhouettes of the other two anglers bail out. I kept fishing. The strong wind and rain only lasted about 15 minutes. After that, the rain almost completely stopped and never got past a drizzle the rest of the night. The wind on the other hand never really slowed down, it was constant over 20 mph all night.

After the rain had stopped I got my first hit. It was a tiny bass of maybe 15 inches. Then another and another. I managed to catch 8 bass in the last two hours fishing. They were not the keepers Dave had told me about. They were all small schoolies. The largest was close to 24 inches.

The highlight of the night and Poseidon's gift was a just legal fluke. Fluke is absolutely my favorite fish to eat. I caught it about 10:30 pm on a zoom fluke. I was so happy to catch it and so afraid to loose it, I dragged it all the way to shore on the hook. I didn't want to take the chance of it slipping away as I took the hook out. I unhooked it on the beach, put it on a rope and went out and caught a few more stripers before going home at 11:35

I got my fishing fix, so hopefully I will make it through the rest of baseball season ( it ends June 13) without to much of a struggle if I can't fish. And more importantly the great god of the sea and storms rewarded my effort with a gift of fluke

Postscript- the image of Poseidon is from google images. Also sorry about the picture of the fluke on the cutting board. It doesn't do it justice, but I couldn't take a picture of it at the beach with drizzle coming down