This past weekend was the opening of trout fishing season in both Connecticut and Rhode Island waters, and by all accounts the fishing was excellent! Anglers in both states finally caught up with our friends to the north in Massachusetts who have the benefit of no seasonal closures, and the catches of rainbow, brown, brook, tiger and even golden trout were running high. If you’re not into the trout thing, all is not lost as there are other options, too.
Striped bass fishing for holdover fish in the tidal rivers, salt ponds and even the surrounding waters of the beachfront continues to improve. This is no doubt due to the warming waters and continued influx of river herring, and I even heard of some schools of adult bunker poking around in Rhody so there is plenty of large forage to eat. Winter flounder catches remain kind of spotty with a few keepers being landed around Norwalk and Niantic in Connecticut as well as some just-shorts landed on the North Shore of Massachusetts. I received a confirmed keeper blackfish report from subscriber John Bratz as he fished 90 to 100 feet of water off Block Island late last week. Mixed with several keeper tog were some market cod as well. There was also word of some keeper tog in some of the deep, 100-foot spots off Niantic, CT, over the weekend. Looking to the week, Monday, April 15, marks the opening of haddock season in the Gulf of Maine aboard for-hire boats, and the preliminary reports from the commercial boats has been of loads of fish on the bank so the bite should start off on a high note.
For details on all this and more, be sure to check out this week’s fishing reports!