A family chartering team that proves fishing can give us the very best life has to offer.
Coral Aiello was 14 years old when she started working as mate on her dad, Joe’s 32-foot BHM charter boat, the F/V Coral Rose out of Newport, RI. She loved working with her dad, doing whatever needed to be done, but when making a shift to a new spot, she often felt more comfortable standing in the wheelhouse, next to her dad, rather than out on the back deck talking with the customers. Fourteen years later, Joe is working the back deck, Coral is running the boat and she is one of the eight members of the Rhode Island fisheries management council.
There are photos of Coral sitting on the engine box when she was only 4 years old and she remembers going fishing with her family when she was in elementary school, but it was not till she was 14 that she expressed an interest in helping her dad on the boat.
Joe Aiello grew up in Tiverton, RI and started working on the water for Alan Wheeler who ran Point Trap which operated large fish traps for scup, squid and other fish, in Little Compton, RI. Even if they hauled two of the big fish traps in a morning, Joe and the crew of the trap boat would usually be back at the dock by 10 a.m., with the day’s catch sorted, iced and boxed for shipment. Alan also owned a lobster boat, which Joe ran every afternoon, hauling a couple hundred traps, clearing the shorts, banding the keepers and rebaiting the traps. Joe also fished for stripers in the fall and cod in the spring.
In 1989, Joe had switched to working on the Diamond Girl, a 94-foot offshore lobster boat, one of the first in that nascent offshore fishery. It was hard work, but good money. The Diamond Girl set her traps in 40 to 150 fathoms on the edge of the continental shelf, throughout the year, including the winter. It was before Coral was born, that the boat lost steerage and took an odd wave, causing the groundline for the lobster pots to slip off the hauler. A 4-foot lobster pot caught Joe from behind, slamming him into a steel stanchion. A coast guard helicopter air-lifted Joe off the deck of the lobster boat and flew him to the Atlantic City Trauma Center with life threatening injuries. Eight operations and three years of recuperation, left Joe wondering what to do next. He bought his first charter boat, the Sara Star.
It seems that some people are born with confidence, while most of us have to learn to be confident in ourselves. Coral may have been shy and introverted when she first started working with her dad, but her natural affinity for fishing and boats helped her find her confidence. Joe smiles when he speaks of those moments when Coral did what had to be done and did it well.
Coral was 14, they were wire-lining with jigs and pork rind, the reel was in free spool and she was letting the wire line out, when a 25-pound bass whacked the jig. What should have been a massive “bird’s nest” and a broken off fish was converted to a catch, as she used her thumb to control the spool, flipped the reel into gear and landed the fish.
In 2015, the big Detroit diesel engine on their boat broke down in June and they were without a boat to complete their charter season. After two months of chartering from a 50-foot lobster boat loaned by a friend, Joe and Coral gained access to a 45-footer that was set up for six-pack fishing. On their 32-foot BHM, Joe could both run the boat and haul the anchor because the wheel and throttle were handy to the starboard gunnel. On this 45-foot boat, with its big Detroit diesel and forward steering station, that wasn’t possible, so 16 year old Coral had to run the boat.
Getting off anchor and positioning the boat so that Joe could grab the anchor line from amidships required finesse to avoid wrapping up the anchor rope in the propeller. With the anchor on the bottom somewhere to the left or right of the bow, Coral needed to put the boat in forward gear and spin the wheel to port so that the anchor line was positively on the starboard bow, then move ahead to port at the proper angle to keep the slacking anchor line on the starboard bow, then alongside the starboard gunnel, allowing Joe to gaff it and get the line in his hands. Joe beams when he describes how well Coral handled the boat and how the formerly uncertain 14 year old, was finding the confidence she needed at 16.
Coral and Joe laugh when they are asked how they work together. “Dad,” says Coral “knows the bottom around here and what stage of tide is best to fish each spot, better than anyone else in the area. I am always learning more from him. But, sometimes he doesn’t see the dipping terns or small surface bait that I can see.” “Yes”, Joe agreed, “not only does she have better eyes than I do, but she also helps me see new techniques and she is very savvy with our electronics”.
Coral and Joe offer a great combination of new methods and ‘old school’ techniques whether they are jigging for tuna, working surface lures for bass, bottom fishing for tautog or tube and worm fishing for stripers. Joe enjoys precision chunking using mackerel and pogies. Coral loves to cast Doc plugs into the shallows.
Captain Joe is an accomplished tube and worm fisherman and that method has proven to be a very successful technique throughout his 30 year charter career. Joe notes, “Current strength is an important variable when you are fishing along the bottom, whether for bass, tautog or sea bass. The speed of the current in any given location varies during each tidal cycle and varies further depending on the stage of the moon and even the strength of the wind. Sometimes the current is too strong and the fish hunker down in the rocks or tight to the bottom, as the energy they need to expend to fight the current, makes feeding at that moment counterproductive. Other times the current is too weak and it seems the baitfish and crabs may have an easier time evading their predators. There is a sweet spot in the speed of the current for each species and the type of bait they are feeding on.”
Joe often talks about how important it is to either find fish in a ‘state of urgency’, that is, in the midst of feeding, or to present your bait or lure in a way that it triggers that ‘sense of urgency’ and causes the fish to make a feeding decision.
Three decades of guiding anglers gives a captain like Joe a lot of data about the conditions such as current speed that will cause fish to attack a lure. Some time ago, they were marking bass on the sounder and fishing tube and worm down tide at just less than 2 knots. The conditions seemed perfect, but they were having little success. This pattern persisted for a few days which was frustrating. Coral had heard her dad talk many times about the need for ‘urgency’ as she thought about options to get the fish to bite. She was going through their tackle boxes when she spotted two parachute jigs amid the diamond jigs and plugs. “Dad, I think running the boat at 3.5 knots while dragging these parachute jigs might work. The fact that the jigs are being trolled more quickly, it might be a more ‘urgent’ presentation than our tube and worm,” Coral suggested. It turned out to be just what they needed and they quickly began to convert those marks on the screen into fish over the rail.
To help engage their customers in the conservation efforts that are necessary for striped bass, Coral began tagging all of the bass they land that measure greater than 35 inches. Coral talks to her anglers on the steam out about the importance of tagging and how the information they record from each fish, plus a photo of the angler with their fish, will be entered into a database that helps scientists and managers understand how the stock is doing. A fun part of the tagging process involves the angler naming the fish, who will be tracked by that name until it is next caught. Coral and her anglers have tagged over 300 striped bass in the last 3 years.
Tautog fishing is all about keeping the boat precisely over a small piece of rocky bottom. Joe has always been very skillful about not only finding tautog bottom, but accounting for the current, wind and water depth to anchor up so that he is just up current of where he expects the tautog to be. “Spot-lock” the GPS integrated trolling motor system, allows a boat captain to stay over a given piece of bottom without anchoring as the GPS and trolling motor work together to hold the boat’s position. Serious tautog fishermen know how important it is to be situated exactly where you want to be and often look for boats to charter that have “spot-lock” as most skippers do not have Joe and Coral’s anchoring skills.
Because of the potential for losing tautog charters to another captain with “spot-lock” capabilities, Joe and Coral made the sizable investment to outfit their 32-foot boat with it in the winter of 2023. While Joe appreciates the capabilities these new electronics systems offer, he is “old school”, so it was important to him that Coral also be proficient in anchoring precisely over a small spot while accounting for tide and wind.
Coral had a hardcore tautog charter last fall on a rough weather day and she had been using the “spot-lock” quite a bit that day. It was not surprising when the batteries played out and the “spot-lock” stopped working. They were fishing in 50 feet of water and had been doing really well. The disappointed look on her charter’s faces was all the motivation she needed. She ran the boat up wind, accounted for the set of the tide, then paid the anchor over the side. When it fetched up, she let out some more scope and cleated it off. Her fishermen were still uncertain until they looked at the GPS and saw they were right on top of the prior mark.
Whether we are a parent, a teacher, a coach or all three, we hope to find the means to help younger people learn from their successes and their mistakes in a supportive environment. All of us are capable of doing more than we think we can and we remember those people whose kindness and patience has allowed us to grow in confidence. It’s likely that two of the greatest satisfactions in life are to see your child grown into a very capable adult and to experience the love and support of your parents. It’s truly a joy to see both of these aspects of the best parts of life on display in the relationship between the father-daughter captains Joe and Coral Aiello.
