Block Island remains comfortable in the mid-seventies. We’ve completely aborted Narragansett Bay. There are a few stripers around but the success rate is low with plenty of searching, casting, and running around. The bait situation is very poor, oxygen levels low, and water temps high.
Out at Block Island the sand eels can be found almost anywhere. Not as dense as previous years where is would fill the screen from top to bottom, there are scattering of bait around. Enough bait to keep small pods of stripers around. Fishing is improving each day. The biggest determent has been heavy fog; nothing seems too materialized near the surface.
Captain’s Log
We had good friend and striper fanatic Bob Signorella onboard this week. This was one of those trips you look forward to each year and wish for better weather. Bob comes all the way from Pennsylvania just to fish for linesiders every couple of years.
We were blanketed by heavy fog all day that never cleared. Most gulls were floating on the calm waters confused too. Cold southerly winds soon make matters worse. We headed back toward the mainland as thunder filled the skies, a disappointed trip to say the least.
We finally got a break from fog on Joe Herbert’s Wednesday trip. We found gull activity on sand lances all along the North Rip near sunrise with over a dozen boats already there. Smaller size pods of stripers in the 6-12 lbs. class were slashing bait below the surface. Under these quiet conditions, boat started moving up and down the rip line searching, found that the noise soon killed the bite.
We left to get away from the fleet and headed south. It took some time to find to find the bite again. We found stripers on bottom structure in 25 feet of water. The bite lasted for over an hour.
We stopped at the North Rip again on the way home to find fish running up and down the bar as the tide was filling in. All toll maybe 15-18 stripers with temps being 75 degrees while the mainland hit the low nineties. Nice and cool and we had a good day.
