Legendary Waters

There are, all along the Mid Atlantic and North East coastline, some legendary stretches of water. Some come to mind immediately to all who know the striper, bluefish, and albie game: Montauk, Block Island, Raritan Bay, Cape Cod....

If you are albie obsessed you surely have heard of Watch Hill. The furthest west light house in Rhode Island sits on the point, and the rip off the point and the beach to the east have been the site of countless monumental blitzes. This water is home to big stripers and albies for much of the fall. Just not yesterday...

It was a stunning fall day, conditions that are not often seen this time of year. It was warm and there was very little wind. It was seemingly the perfect conditions. Despite the conditions, there was very little bait and subsequently very few big fish. We found birds going for a very short amount of time along the beach west of Watch Hill and a few albies popping up, but they were so scattered and sporadic they may as well not have been there.

We were put to work. We covered water. We set up drift after drift. No fish.

We fished lots of different types of water and saw fish only occasionally. At one point we tried to wade a muscle bar that I had seen a big bass working. That was not successful.

As we were working quickly along a gravel bar I suddenly started to see stripers under the boat. We turned and tried to get a drift over the spot and Mark got the first fish of the day. Despite working the spot for a little while longer we didn't get any more fish there.

We worked a rocky stretch of shoreline for a little while where Mark got another schoolie. Looking down further into the bay I could see a causeway with single bridge on it. I suggested we check it out. Sure enough there were fish there. Schoolies and hickory shad.

Those fish took a whole day to find... sometimes you need to work hard for a small reward.