Monday morning brought Liz and her son Jeffery down for their first try at spin fishing. I had warned them about the wind but they wanted to go anyway. We started off pretty close in a lee and they got a feel for casting. We moved out in search of fishable water and had to settle for second choice. After a bit of traveling we found some reasonably calm water that held a few fish. They weren’t interested in what we were throwing so we went smaller. Soon after Jeff landed a mighty snapper bluefish. At this point I wasn’t complaining. As the morning wore on the guys casting improved significantly and as a reward the albies arrived. The casting lessons ended and the hooking,fighting and landing lessons began. Being the great students that they were we soon had some picture worthy fish in the boat followed by a couple more. Lots of fun on the briney.

We’ve been busy for the past two weeks having fun with the elusive bonito. Some days we had to work pretty hard and other days it was pretty easy. Well, we went out this morning and all that changed.For the 27 th year in a row Gail put the first Albie in the boat for this year. They were eating flies pretty well but when the wind and boats showed up we switched over to spin rods. Those fish sure do like an albi snax.

I f you know me this photo needs no explanation. We headed out this morning at a fairly reasonable hour. Found some fish pretty quickly and got rid of the skunk. There were good schools of these guys spread out over a ten mile area. We had to run and gun a bit but there weren’t any boats around to aggravate so it worked out for us. We ended the day in double figures so there were no complaints about that.

We are still alive and fishing although we were laid up with a sick motor. A problem that is intermittent is a royal pain to figure out. Luckily for us Gary kept at it and fixed the problem. We put the boat in last night and took a shakedown cruise today. I brought a couple spin rods just in case we stumbled on something fun. Twenty minutes in we saw some familiar splashes. We stayed and played and put three bonito and a renegade bluefish in the boat. We marked tons of bait so that should keep things interesting. Stay tuned.

Julian brought his parents and good buddy Wes all the way from the west coast today. We started off with a bunch of sand sharks for everyone. They were followed by a half dozen porgys and a few fluke and one lonesome sea bass. We tried but could not find the elusive sea robin. The Noyes had some fun and the Captain did too.

Paul came across the RI border to find some stripers that were willing to play. We left near the end of the flood tide and stopped at almost every place that I’ve caught a bass and with the exception of one half hearted strike we pretty much struck out. Luckily the tide changed and when it started the fish showed up along with their appetites. We finished the day with a few in the boat after way too many casts.

Rick and his brother Zac made the short but dangerous crossing of the Rhode Island border to go in search of the elusive striped bass. We did a lot of moving and picked up a handful of schoolies bass and one nice blackfish on a fly. With all of the Sunday traffic out there we didn’t see another boat land a fish. A pretty good day after all.

Wednesday morning brought Dr. Jeff up the always dangerous Rt.95. We left the dock bright and early to catch the end of the ebb tide. It took Jeff two casts to put the first fish in the boat. It was a good bite till the tide died out then we went exploring. While out and about we came across a young humpback whale grazing on millions of small sand eels. The youngster was about 30 feet long. It put on a pretty good show for us. We poked around and found more bass on top of a bunch of boulders. Had some fun and called it a day.

.

I practiced on Thursday and caught this one on Friday. It was 27#s on the Boga but not quite as big as Gail’s the day before. For a weekday we had people stemming, trolling, drifting and running around. We had a pretty good morning with fly rods. We even caught a couple of fish in different areas than the normal ones.