Main page | June 11, 2008 »

Fly fishermen catching bass

Shane Bettencourt with the 22-pound, 4-ounce bass he caught to win the youth division of the Striper Marina 15th annual spring tournament.

Fly fisherman Ed Hughes fished his yellow Ugly Fly along the Edgewood shore yesterday and caught a lot of bass between 24 and 34 inches long. In three hours, he lost count of the number of fish that struck, but he said the action was fast on the incoming tide. The Ugly Fly had a pearlescent braid body, a heavy wing of yellow bucktail, and a huge red-thread head. "Saw a lot of fish just rolling," he wrote. "I couldn't tell what they were hitting but it could be the crab hatch. Needless to say I'm going back to find out!"

Potter Pond was filled with fish last night, said Ed Lombardo who borrowed Alan Gelfuso's skiff to catch several bass -- including some keepers -- from 4:30 to 9 p.m. The most effective pattern was Page Roger's Cinder Worm.

Also from South County, Thom Pelletier, skipper of the charter boat ThomCat, reports:

"After Sunday's slow flukin' around the Matunuck area I was a little apprehensive about Monday's charter. No worries however as angler Steve Mendes, fishing solo, put on a clinic on tempting some good sized fish. Kept seven fish between 3.5 and 6 pounds and threw back a good number of keepers in 45 to 55 feet. Big Pink ThomCats with mummies and squid were the only rigs used. Got a little snotty about mid-morning but a solid six hours of action. Never took our sweatshirts off the whole outing. Heard it got a bit toasty inland."

Mike Munroe reports: "I went out on the Providence River Friday night on a bait run. There were schools of pogies everywhere and we easily caught enough bait for our trip on Saturday. We also stayed and fished for a while resulting in three nice stripers ranging from 15 to about 18 pounds. All of the fish were taken on live pogies.

"Saturday, we had no luck for the afternoon, again in the Providence River. The schools of bait were still in the area, however. They were a bit smaller than the schools on Friday night. We tried livelining as well as chunking pogies with no success. We did not notice many boats around us having success either."

Posted by Tom Meade  at 9:02 AM | Permalink