Micro Bait Season

In August, our coastal waters get flushed with young of the year baitfish. Minuscule in size but numbering in the billions, juvenile menhaden, bay anchovies, silversides, and butterfish fuel some of the most visually spectacular surface feeds of the year. The last few years the weather has been awful most of October and November, which would normally be big blitz time here. August and September, the micro bait season, have surpassed the following months for heavy action and visual spectacle in Eastern Long Island Sound, South County Rhode Island, and Narragansett Bay for the last three years. In August this year and last, schoolie bass and chub mackerel have put on some of the greatest shows while feeding on bay anchovies less than an inch long.

My friend Captain Ian Devlin asked if I'd like to make a run east with him on August 1st to partake in the early days of the chaos. Promise of chub mackerel froth feeding and rafting stripers was also accompanied by trustworthy reports of frigate tuna, a small scombrid species only occasionally found in these waters. Of course I was game. So it was that Ian and I readied to launch his Lake & Bay skiff as the sun rose on the first day of August, watching a greater black-backed gull admire his own reflection in the chrome bumped of a parked truck. Soon we were on the water and speeding towards Watch Hill. We didn't get there before finding a couple big schools of chub mackerel froth feeding.

The sound these fish make when a big school surface feeds is really something to behold. From the calm ocean surface arises the sudden roaring of hundreds of fish blasting through the surface in a frenzy to get as many bay anchovies in their mouths as possible. Every once in a while though, one of those little bait fish is a fake.

It's amazing to think that Scomber colias were unheard of inshore just five or six years ago.Now for at least a couple weeks each summer, it's difficult to run a boat along any four mile stretch of shoreline between Niantic and Point Judith between sunrise and sunset and not see at least a small school some where along the way. They're fun, beautiful little fish, and bend a five weight a lot better than any trout of similar size.

We had our fill with those schools, then headed further east. Watch was a zoo in terms of blitzing fish, slowly becoming a zoo in terms of boats as well, but we got some time without too much traffic to photograph and cast to schools of both bass and chub mackerel.

When the crowds descended we continued east and found a third of a mile of chub mackerel working east to west down the beach, literally making waves in their wake. The biomass of fish in these waters at this time of year is quite astounding. We were able to get ahead of the school and get shot after shot as pods came by the boat.

The chub mackerel school led us way back west, right to a school of bass up near the beach.

Eastward bound again, we glimpsed a handful of brief blows that were certainly not bass but didn't seem to be chub mackerel either. They appeared like tiny false albacore slashing through bait balls... these must have been the frigate tuna we'd so hoped to encounter, but they were up and down quickly and we got no shots at them.

The final blitz we encountered was an interesting mixed bag. There were bass and chub mackerel up top, scup just below, and hickory shad on the bottom. I got one each of the scup and hickories, making for a unique mixed bag of scombrid, moronid, sparid, and colubrid species. A wide range of fish were taking advantage of the plethora of micro bait. (I didn't photograph the hickory as it was bleeding heavily)

We ended our day on the flats, expecting very little there but finding loads of bass. In the heat of August stripers typically seek deeper, cooler water, but the micro bait had lead some to the shallows, were fish were inhaling tennis-ball sized schools of tiny menhaden. This fish have proved over the years to be just about impossible to deceive, and we certainly didn't figure it out this time. But just seeing that there was so much going on in all sorts of areas and in different depths was exiting. Stripers in particular are remarkably versatile fish. It never ceases to amaze me how broad their range of comfort is. 

But then again apparently scup are quite versatile too, as I got another up on that flat on a Jiggy. 

A few weeks later, micro bait season continues in these parts... and honestly things have gotten pretty wild. But I still have a lot of catch up to do before we get to that.

Until next time,
Fish for the love of fish.
Fish for the love of places fish live.
Fish for you.
And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, and Franky for supporting this blog on Patreon.