Olympics and Red (kayak), White (rumped sandpiper) and Blue(fish) Catching up on August

My biggest blue. Caught about ten days ago before the Olympics  started

I haven't wrote much the last couple of weeks. The main reason for that is the Olympics. For the most part I have spent every night the last week watching them. I really don't watch much television. Sometimes, I'll go weeks at a time without even turning it on. However, since the Summer Olympics are only on every four years, I watch as much as I can

 My friend Laurie comes over almost every night to watch them. She is huge into the Olympics. As I have said before, her favorite sports are gymnastics and figure skating. It blows me away how much she knows about gymnastics.  We all know sports junkies that know all the stats from Fantasy Baseball and football. Laurie is like that with gymno.  She knows everyone's routine, not just the Americans, but everyone! We could be watching Great Britain's third best girl on balance beam, and Laurie can tell if she took a twist or flip out of her routine. It is amazing to see.

As for the other things mentioned in this post's title: the colors are patriotic symbolizing myself and Laurie rooting for team USA. However when I have gotten out it has been to go birding from my (red) kayak at Charlestown Breachway. I went today. I ran across two other birders that I have seen many times this year. They spotted two new birds for me this year ( Pectoral Sandpiper and Lesser Yellowlegs). We thought we had a white-rumped sandpiper, but it turned out to be a big Least Sandpiper.

Three Short-Billed Dowitchers

Before I started on the Olympic binge I was still enjoying the incredible summer fishing that
Narragansett Bay has blessed me with this year. Although I was still catching the occasional small striper, for the most part I had been getting bluefish every night. I was probably averaging 6-8 fish with tons more hits. Some nights the hot lure was shad bodies. As you can imagine the blues were chewing them to pieces. On nights that the fish were less fussy, we were getting them on poppers and Jumpin Minnows. The blues ranged ion size from 2 pounds up to big ten pounders. You just never knew what you would hook.  It was a blast.

It was hard to take a couple weeks off from the great fishing. I've heard the fishing has slowed down a lot. I'm not happy to hear that. I'd rather be missing out with something to look forward to in a week. Whatever happens, it has been a fun summer so far.

Go USA!