A big pile of mackerel at dark saved the day which had been disappointing. The bait is around but the stripers are in short supply as November gets off to a slow start. Today was a strange day.  In fact it has been a strange week that brought big numbers of small bait to the shore along with birds diving.  But stripers have been in short supply....

And I found big numbers of fish today. They are not in all the locations along the south shore but with a little looking you might just find a blitz underway.  The fish are really on the move!

The bait was small today and the stripers were plentiful and fussy. It was a perfect set-up for a 3 inch NLBN (No Live Bait Needed) paddle tail.  And it worked like a charm!

I had a frustrating day of it yesterday.  For hours I watched masses of birds diving onto bait as predators attacked from below (see video below).  This was happening in multiple spots. And it was all happening out of casting range. This is a pattern that I've seen very often this fall.  A lot of the bait and migrating stripers are tracking well...

The Chatham bluefin tuna are not far offshore in the fall and tend to be quite fat as they are getting ready for winter. Mike and his customers catch the big ones.

Mike and his charter party caught four giants. This was a catch and release. Four giants one day

Yesterday's rainbow was a stunner. Unfortunately there was no pot of gold and no fish at the end of the rainbow!

The future of our striped bass fishery took a big hit in the recent release of the 2023 Young of the Year survey in Chesapeake Bay.  Stripers spawn in the Chesapeake and this index is a measure of the the spawning success or failure.  This year's index was an abysmal 1.0 one of the worst spawning years ever (it was.89 in 2012). This comes on the...

The beachfront was running hot today with lots of slot fish in a mid day blitz.  I have been chasing stripers up and down beaches for the last three days. Today I set out on a long walk in search of them.  I saw a few birds working in the distance about a quarter mile from where I was so I went down the shore to investigate. As I got to the spot w...

It was a bonanza of slots tonight in the darkness. Overall it was a pretty dead day today in the daylight along the oceanfront.  But there was some bait around and I have been making an effort in the last couple of weeks to fish later at night.  So I decided that I would stick it out tonight well after dark. It paid off. As it got pitch dark I n...

Here's a slot fish from yesterday  coming to the kayak. It was caught  in the Bay. Everybody was complaining about that persistent northeast wind in late September except us surf fishermen.  When we had the northeast wind  from mid to late September the striper fishing was lights out.  It has cleared in the last week with some beautiful weather...

This Hopkins metal lure delivered yesterday in the wind and heavy surf. I was looking at a skunk yesterday.  I was fishing great water and rough conditions and I just knew there were fish around but I was not getting them. I was fishing mostly with my bucktail jig.  It was not working. I thought to myself maybe a longer cast in these rough condi...

I've got my thumb in the jaw of another good size slot that fell for a bucktail jig with a pink Fat Cow jig strip. Fishing has been read hot in the last week for me. For me this has been the best week of the year for saltwater fishing. I fished hard the last 5 days in a row and caught staggering numbers of stripers of all sizes from schoolies up...

Today's biggie was a brute of a fish- big head big girth and strong as an ox.  I landed a brute of a fish today. It was one of those old fashioned fish we used to catch 30 and 40 years ago.  It was at least 40 inches long with a  big head and a wide girth.  And it possessed some brute strength.   The fish took a two ounce homemade bucktail jig wit...

This slot fish one of many today took a large bucktail jig with a Fat Cow jig strip. It was the storm that wasn't. Today's surf was supposed to be dangerously high and super rough. It wasn't.  In fact by evening the ocean was flat as a pancake with a gentle northwesterly breeze. The water was clean with no sand in it along the places I fished to...

If you are even thinking about fishing anywhere along the oceanfront in the next few days forget it.  I went down today to try and get in one more day of fishing and it was impossible. I saw huge hurricane driven waves in the 8 to 15 foot range coming right over the East Center and West Walls around the Harbor of Refuge in Narragansett. Keep in m...

It's been a big week of fishing here in RI with everything from stripers to albies.  Today's blitz of stripers was one of the biggest I have seen in a long time.  The stripers were after massive schools of bay anchovies.

They say a picture says a thousand words but in this case the picture says just three words. THEY ARE IN! Albie Master Tim shows how it's done.

I'm about to grab a schoolie that was caught from the kayak this morning.  The fishing all over RI was hot as the weather today! The RI saltwater scene just took a dramatic turn for the better.  Along the oceanfront a lot of that bait that was off the shore has moved in possibly driven in by albies as the albie fishing has taken a big turn for t...

This is one of many stripers and blues that I landed today in the Bay from the kayak. They were  chasing down schools of peanut bunker. Last evening/night I hit the oceanfront in a place where the tide and conditions were just right.  The only thing missing was bait.  I made a lot of casts and came away with one striper a schoolie along with a k...