Great fishing this week

As usual I'm having computer problems so even though I had some good fishing this week I haven't been able to write about it. I'm at DJ's grammas writing this.

I went out Thursday night with my friend Jeff Henderson. We went to Narragansett and Jamestown. Our game plan was to fish spots until we found fish. We started before dark at Sprague Bridge. We were hoping to get some schoolies in the marsh behind the bridge. Within minutes Jeff hooked into a schoolie. Of course this gave us hope that we would catch a bunch. Nope.
It was the only one we caught in the time we got there until dark. We went to Narragansett Beach. There was a guy surfing on waves bigger than he was, so we headed to Jamestown. We tried three spots before we came upon fish. For most of the night we thought " here we go again" and planned on an awful night striper fishing.
At the last place we found fish. Within 2 hours between us we had 8 hits. Unfortunately for me, Jeff caught the majority. I only landed one fish, a large schoolie about 26 inches. I had two other bumps. Jeff killed me, landing 3 stripers all keepers about 31 inches. He also had one on that was 36 inches or more. It broke the line because he was using a schoolie rod with 12 pound test. He also had at least 3 more hits. Like I said he killed me. We fished until 1:30 am. Neither of us were very tired and fish were still around, but our feet were killing us because of standing on jagged rocks.

The next day I got a tip from Dave about some HUGE scup in the middle of the bay. Jeff and I went down to check it out. Sure enough within ten minutes of fishing we were into big scup, one after another. We were getting hits on every cast. It was awesome. We each caught a fluke and Jeff caught a small bluefish. On this night I caught a few more than him. We were getting hits on every cast like I said, but I figured out how to get a hookset a little before him. Also, we both agreed I had more fish in front of me, instead of him. So, we both started casting in one small area. ( No competition, teamwork) We landed fish well past dark. We caught more than we could count. They were all above average size. We also caught a few giants, easily going over 2 pounds. The really neat thing was we were catching them on lures. My go to choice was a 3 inch white curly tail grub. I was actually ripping the tail off and fishing with the stub. I was getting just as many hits, but they weren't focusing on the tail so I was getting more hooksets.
We were fishing a hundred yards from shore. Not the brightest bulbs. There was lightning all around. We kept an eye out for the direction of strikes and wind direction. Nothing came to close to us but the sky lit up enough times that we were nervous. After we caught enough fish, we realized we probably should not be in the water. We got out of the water and back to the cars at 9:46.

Like I said at the beginnig, my computer is giving me troutble, we have some pics of scup and fluke. When I get a chance I will add them.

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