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Best April EVER for Big Fish?

 | By Seamus on 5/1/2026 3:51:00 PM | Views (5)

 
Holy Smokes- this big fish was landed this week
as a slug of big stripers have entered RI waters.
Jon and I had many slots and overslots this week.

Conventional wisdom says April fishing for stripers is a schoolie game here in RI. But, this year has been far different like I have never seen before.  In the last week, the last week of April, my son Jon and I have fished every evening and we have been into some big stripers with good numbers of them. We caught several in the 40 inch range with the biggest of the week at 43 inches. Along with these big ones, we had good numbers of slot fish.  I had only one schoolie this week.  The small fish have just not been around.

In all my years of fishing, I have never landed a 40 inch striper in April until this year. These large fish generally come around in early to mid May when the water warms up and the menhaden come around. 

 Nine inch Slug-gos were the hot lures all week.


Everything was wrong this week- cold northeast winds, cold water, no bait, but the fish were just around in real good numbers.  We landed nearly all our fish on 9 inch Slug-gos.  I was using a rainbow trout color (discontinued), and he was using a white one. This single hooked lure made for easy catch-and-release fishing. The Slug-go was also the most effective lure as we tried others with nowhere near the success.

No question, this April was the first year we have even seen large fish this early.  I hope it continues into May.

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Catch Information

Species:
Rainbow Trout
Rainbow Trout

Striped Bass
Striped Bass

This Fishing Report was submitted on 5/1/2026 3:51:00 PM by Seamus and last updated on 6/2/2026 6:52:09 PM.


Location

2000 Sailfish Point
Manteo, NC US

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