Jim enjoyed last weeks trip so much that he came back again today. We left early but in time to meet up with 12 or so of our boating friends. The fish were scattered and extremely fussy. We managed two good ones and only saw two others caught. All in all not a bad day with light winds and blue sky.
Jim came down for our first trip of the year. It took two casts for the first eater. Perfect conditions for an afternoon on the briney. We had a steady pick for the day. Not a bad start.
I took a solo trip yesterday to do a little scouting. My first stop had a rip that was a bit more than I wanted to deal with so I made a move to one that was only three feet. Shortly my bucktail got slammed and after a longer fight than I wanted I was able to net a 37”- 20# striper. Picked another around 12 lbs and by then the tide slowed enough for me to go back to my first stop. I was able to get three more between eight and ten lbs. to eat a fly. A pretty good two hour trip to begin the season.
The email contact part of my website has gone on vacation so now it’s best to contact me by calling my cell at 860-884-3792 or email me at noyessg@sbcglobal.com just leave me a message and I’ll get back to you.
I will be getting the boat ready next week and it should be in the water soon. The small stripers have started to trickle into the bays and rivers. These are the 15 inch ones and they will be followed by the larger fish in the next couple weeks. The reports that I’ve seen are this year is a good one for squid of all sizes. That bodes well for a good start to our season. Stay tuned and I’ll keep you posted.
It looks to be a cold start to 2025. I can’t believe that this is going to be my 28th season as a Guide on the briney. It’s still fun so I’m going to keep doing it. The good news is that Charter prices will stay the same as the past few years. The fishing outlook is pretty good. The majority of the bass should be in the 10 to 12 lb. Range with some bigger ones in the mix. No telling about bluefish but going by last year we should see some good fishing for bonito. If the albies come inshore this year it will be the icing on the cake.
Another season is in the book. That makes 27 for me guiding. We met some new and pretty cool anglers this year. That keeps things interesting for us. Add them to our regulars and we had lots of laughs on the briney this year. The bass started off with good numbers and pretty good sizes. We had several that were north of 20 lbs. I think we caught three bluefish this year. The albies were a no show. They had too much bait offshore and had no need to come in to play. The big surprise was the amount of bonito that visited with us. We caught more this year than the last five years combined. Hopefully we’ll all be here to do it again next season. Stay safe and have some fun. Thanks to all of my old and new friends.
Yesterday Stan and Justin came down for a shot at some stripers. We headed out at dawn to where they have been for the past week. Unfortunately they had moved on. There was acres of bait still around but no bass. We moved around and found pockets of Atlantic Mackerel that were willing to play. That got pretty old after a short time so we kept on going. I decided to look in the area that we found some Bonito earlier in the week. We found more Mack’s but with them were a good number of Bones that wanted to play. We had several hours of both species one after another. We ended up with as many bones as we had Mack’s. In 28 years of doing this I’ve never seen a day like this. On the way home we made one more stop and picked up one elusive bass. Pretty fun day all around.
It had been quite a while since we were able to get out in the boat so we set the alarm to beat the sun. I’ve been running the boat a lot but others were doing the fishing. We found the birds and the bait pretty quickly and soon after the bass found us. The picture on the right is my side scan so that was what we were competing with. We caught bass for an hour or so until the tide slowed and the bass dropped down. After a bit of a run we found several schools of chub and Atlantic mackerel and we discovered that if you cast to the side of the school you had a good chance at the elusive bonito. The three species were running together so you never knew what would take our fly. We had several doubles with the bones and a bunch of singles. A morning well spent.
John had to head home yesterday so it was Steve for his third day in a row. We headed out to the spot that was holding stripers. There were a few around and Steve managed to get one to eat. That area petered out soon after so we decided to take a ride. After a couple of stops we managed a bonito a mackerel and two sea robins. Not great compared to the past few days. On the way back we hit a couple blitzes and managed to land a handful of nice sized stripers. First time this season that we had three good days in a row.
No pics today. Thursday morning brought Steve and John back for some fun on the briney. We left with the sun and found the bass right away. We were on bass for about five hrs of the six hr trip. Flies and Albi Snax were the ticket. The fish were averaging eight to ten lbs. with some around 15 or so. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.
Capt. Sandy Noyes has lived and fished in the Southeastern part of Connecticut for his entire life. … [More...]
