Two Days in South County RI

Least Sandpiper

I was told on Wednesday afternoon that I would have Thursday and Friday off from work. If I would have known sooner, I would have gone to New Hampshire. I would have packed on Tuesday and left for the Granite State on Wednesday after work. It's just not worth the gas and not enough time to go if I can't spend two nights there.

So that night I put a list together of possible things to do on my days off. I certainly did not want to waste my time off sitting at home wondering what to do. The options I came up with were...

Charlestown Breachway birding in the am and looking for albies in the afternoon

Hike Mount Monadnock

Birding at  Parker River in Newburyport

I won't bore you with the pluses and minuses of each. Suffice to say I chose the first option for Thursday. Depending on the weather and how much fun I had for Friday I'd make up my mind on Thursday night.

Thursday morning at Charlestown Breachway

I put my kayak in at the boat ramp and paddled towards a mud flat at 9 am. I saw three birders on the

Looking into Charlestown Breachway
from the East Beach side

way to my destination. I decided to beach my watercraft and see if they had seen anything. They hadn't seen anything special. The best bird they had on the flats were a few black bellied plovers. I talked to them for a few minutes. They were very nice, it paid off later in the day that I made this connection.

I birded around Ninigret Pond for some time. Besides the plovers, I saw a Whimbrel, which is a pretty big shorebird with a down turned beak. Finally I beached my kayak on the biggest mudflat, which wasn't that big because the tide was rising rapidly. Again, I had the usual assortment of common shorebirds. Then I spotted a large sandpiper I did not recognize. To make things worse, it was backlit against the sun. I had no idea what it was. However, my three new amigos were walking towards me. I called them over and they looked at it. One of them was carrying a scope. He identified the bird as a Buff Breasted Sandpiper. Score! this was a lifebird for me. While we were all together, he found in his scope an American Golden Plover, this was only the second time I have ever seen one. It was another terrific find. THEN, the spotted Western Sandpipers, another lifebird. I had two lifebirds, the plover and black terns ( I found on my own) in a matter of fifteen minutes.

Finally the tide rose and it was getting late. I kayaked back to my car and went to Trustom Pond. A Black Guillemot had been seen there for two days. I had never seen one. Still haven't. I spent two fruitless hours that I could have been fishing looking for it. I saw the usual yard birds. By far the best bird I saw was a female American Redstart that sat on a tree limb looking right at me. She was a sight. I left about 2 pm.

Fishing Thursday afternoon

It was so late I didn't go to the West Wall. I knew a trip there would cost me an hour. Well worth it if

School of large menhaden

fish were around, but I didn't want to gamble with the 60 minutes. So I headed up to Narragansett. While I was searching in vain for that bird, my friend Dave was scouting fishing spots. He saw breaking fish at a couple places. I met him at one of the avenues that he saw  fish. When I got there, no fish had been close enough to shore to catch.

 While we were sitting on the rocks a large pod of bait got close to shore on our left. Soon after fish started ripping through the school.I took a chance  the fish would still be there if I made my way over. So I climbed over bowling ball sized rocks to the fish. The fish would only pop up for a minute and then they'd be gone. If you were lucky, you'd be able to make one cast into them..  I ended up catching four stripers around 25 inches with two others on. I didn't see any albacore.This does not go down as the best fishing day ever. Never the less, I was pleased to end such a great day with some fish.

Friday-

I woke up Friday to a chilly morning. It was overcast, so that took hiking Monadnock off the table. I considered going to a waterfall in Rhode Island I just found out about (Step Stone Falls) but since we haven't had any rain in a month I doubt it would have more than a trickle. I thought about going to Plum Island, but what I really wanted to do was catch more stripers. So that's what I tried to do. The chilly morning came with a northeast wind. Thursday the air and water was dead calm. I knew that the northeast would churn up the water. This can light up fishing. Not today! I tried all over Narragansett without any luck. I hit all the avenues and Point Judith and never saw a fish or even bait.  I went back to some spots a couple of times. Basically, I fished hard for six hours into a giant, sterile, fishing pool.

At 5:30 I decided to go fish a quiet backwater spot. This spot can produce snapper blues, schoolies, and hickory shad. I would have taken any of the three. Anything to say I caught a fish. It turned out

My Salvation
Hickory Shad

the hickory shad wanted to play. The spot was loaded with them. Hickory Shad are usually pretty easy to catch. If they are around they can be caught on every cast. Today they were very fussy. They were breaking all over but I had a hard time catching them. While the sun was still high I had a lot of follows and swipes but not many hits.

As the sun went down they became more aggressive. I started getting hits on every cast. Usually multiple hits on each cast yet I wasn't catching many. I kid you not I had three hundred hits. I don't know if they were banging my three inch Zoom fluke or biting the tail. To make things worse ( keep in mind I was very happy to be on fish, just confused that I wasn't catching them) many of the fish I was hooking came off. I kept track, I hooked up with 28 shad and landed a total of ten. I'm not complaining, catching ten shad salvaged a bad day fishing. I'm just saying I landed one fish for every thirty hits. I love hickory shad, so I stayed at the backwater spot until dark.

So clearly Thursday was the better day. Birding was awesome and the fishing was really good, Friday ended up being okay. By the time I got to the ocean there wasn't a cloud in the sky, so by the chart, I should have hiked Monadnock. I had to follow my heart though. I wanted to catch more stripers. I would have thought "what if" all day if I didn't try.

One of my least favorite birds, the cormorant
I couldn't pass up this picture though