Four days after my final run for migratory striped bass in Rhode Island, I was headed the opposite direction. With but five days left in November, the biggest biomasses of stripers left north of Long Island had made its way into the western end of Long Island Sound. This is also one of the last places during the fall where the juvenile menhaden hand in. When the in migrating bass and out migrating bait collide each late fall, blitzes ensue.
The shoreline in Western CT is very different from that of Southern Rhode Island; much less pristine, far more populated, and noticeably busier in the late season. Yet it still holds a special place for me, as it has some unique shoreline features not found in many other places locally. Islands and tombolos are important features there, allowing wading access to distances as much as a mile from the beach. Many of these tombolos submerge through large parts of the tide, and form a choke point that baitfish are forced to flush over and which predator fish can ambush in front of or behind. There are also a number of major estuaries on the CT side, though they aren’t quite the blitz generators that the big bays on the north side of Long Island are. Regardless, it took me no time at all to find birds over schoolies on the 25th of November.
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| Birds over a large but distant blitz. |
Though the blitzing fish were way out of fly casting range and showing no signs of coming closer, it was immediately clear that there were plenty of less showy fish close in. I started with a Bob’s Banger, looking for that last topwater blowup of the season. Fish were all… well, not all over it, but all around it. Boils, tail slaps, and slashes made me hope one might finally connect, but these little schoolies just weren’t committing. I switched to the EP Peanut Butter and the story changed. I was quickly converting chases into grabs and grabs into fish to hand. They were very small but I was happy as can be way out on that tombolo catching pretty little stripers.
There were a bunch of smaller adult menhaden out there too, schoolies swam past me pretty regularly. I was hopeful that they could be attracting some bigger stripers, but I could barely break the 20 inch mark. At one point, I got a weird take that was very herring like, a couple light whacks then a thump, and when I set the hook the fish started jumping. I was pretty sure it was a hickory shad, but when I got it to hand I saw that it was a menhaden. What possesses these filter feeding fish to attack a fly or jig on occasion is beyond my understanding, but this wasn’t the first time I’d experienced this behavior.
Shortly after I caught that bunker, I removed my waders and headed to The Compleat Angler so Ian Devlin could give me the 12wt my friend Pat had given him to hold onto for me and pick a reel for it. I’d catch no more stripers for a few days, but on the second top last month I decided to head south of me to see if there were still any stripers hanging around on the beaches there. It turns out there were some… out front- not just in the backwater. The next day, a massive storm hit and churned the waters in this area up. I was storm chasing that day, hoping to make the best of the last appreciable tornado threat of the year in CT. It didn’t end up being a tornado chase at all though, instead it was a gnarly nor’easter with big swell and howling wind -still quite a spectacle.
With the migratory fish window passing quickly, it seemed that nor’easter should have ended the blitz window. Surprisingly, it wasn’t over yet. Stay tuned.
Good read and love the windy weather photos.
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Thank you!
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