About 15 years ago, my first longtime fishing partner bought a boat and mostly abandoned the surf, which was a sad stretch of time for me. But, one of the positive things that came out of that transition was more time for me spent fishing from a boat. Looking back on it now, I wish I had been smart enough to spend even more time doing that, but I was in the prime of my surfcasting ‘career’ at that time and I didn’t want to compromise too much time in the surf.
Each of those first few seasons with him in a boat and me still on the rocks, he was finding some incredible fishing up inside Narragansett Bay. And I would get regular reports from him about the fishing and where it was going down. Much like today, the bite in the bay was centered around bunker. Anywhere there was a school of bunker, there seemed to be at least a few plus-sized linesiders with them.
However, there were stretches of time when the bunker were scarce and the fishing was tougher, the method then changed from finding bunker to finding bass and one of the more effective ways to do this was to find a rip. Of course there are rips all over Narragansett Bay and all of them have held fish at one time or another. When the bass were hanging around the north end of Jamestown and the bunker disappeared, one of the spots that would sometimes put out fish when other, more prominent rips, were barren was Sand Point of the west side of Jamestown.
This rounded, short point is located about 2.2 miles north of the Jamestown Bridge. It’s not a massive, prominent point, it’s more of a bump with a shallow cove on its north side. But when the incoming tide got up to speed, a pretty good rip would set up, especially with a north or northwest wind and a big tide. This spot isn’t a guarantee spot, it’s a place that’s worth a stop when the bass and bunker have been tough to locate, but a few times it was loaded with large fish from 30- to 40-plus pounds and they were very happy to smash live-lined bunker. And while we never did it, I’m certain that throwing large topwaters like the Shimano SplashWalk or the Doc would draw some wicked strikes on those windy, cloudy days with rough water working through the rip.
If you look at this spot on a navigational chart, you’ll see that it features one of the only segments of shallower, more gradually-sloped bottom on that entire shoreline. This lends itself well to the ambush preferences of striped bass and to fishing lures and baits that tend to stay up near the surface (like bunker and topwater plugs). This is probably one of the other reasons why stripers show up here often enough to make it worthy of a stop. And while I have not tried to fish for other species here, I’d be willing to bet that scup, blackfish and maybe even a fluke or two could be caught here at different times of the year. But for those of you, like me, that get crazy for stripers in May and June, this is a great spot to have in your back pocket. Give it a shot.
