GSF Articles

Block Island Surf Fishing

By Michelle Bowma


Each year I head over to Block Island for a couple of weeks to teach surfing to women. Block Island is a small 10 by 4 mile island 13 miles off the coast of Rhode Island. It's a great surf retreat in a spot with small surf (perfect for beginners) but good weather and warm water in late August /early September. We do a lot of surfing, yoga, hiking and biking.

But what I was really there for this year was some fishing! The past two years I've been...let's call it "shut out". I made the mistake, the past two years, of expecting to find tackle shops that would rent me a rod (I had my own reel) and help a fellow fisherman out looking for the local bite. Well, that wasn't the case so this year I came prepared with rods, reels and flies... ready to tackle the infamous Atlantic and whatever it had to throw at me!

Once on the island I hit up the more friendly of the two tackle shops - Block Island Fishworks. It’s a small tackle shop with about 100 sq feet of space, floor to ceiling with East Coast style tackle, much of which I had heard of but never used. Some of it looked familiar. Some, very foreign. I asked the 20-something behind the counter about spots to fish, what to use on the fly and what was biting. He was pretty friendly and told me, "Stripahs and bonies are biting. Head to The Cut", as he pointed to a spot on the finger-print laden map on the back of the shop door.
 The Cut was the only opening to the one big harbor on the island. Most local boats went in and out of this channel at all hours of the night and day. With the full moon fast approaching I made my decision to hit "The Cut" in the next day or two… as early as I could muster.

Two mornings later I arose at 6am thinking I'm the early bird! I headed out to The Cut, snapping a few pics along the way as the island slowly woke up.
I arrived to find several fishermen already there. Spinners in full throttle, buckets of sand eels perched on the sand, and looks of a little astonishment. Apparently, Asian surfer girls in surf trunks with spinning and fly rigs don't show up too often on that stretch of the beach! 

I nestled down into a little spot of my own and decided that with the bit of wind that was picking up already I would use my spinning rig. I didn't have any of the infamous sand eels so I dug into my pack and found my CA version - Gulp shad! I c-rigged one up and tossed it out. Not much luck for while but then I slowed down the pace, let the changing tide do a little work for me and...TSSSSSSS...HOOK UP!  Landed my first East Coast fish...a small, not-legal fluke!

Needless to say the other fishermen were beginning to relax a little and actually started conversing with me giving me pointers on what to use, where to cast etc. All pointers were much appreciated! It seemed to me that the bite was fairly slow. I caught two more fluke on the morning plus another perchy looking fellah...a "porgie" or "scup" someone said. By 8am early morning yoga class called so I packed it in and headed home.

The next morning I arrived even earlier, determined to get a shot at the bite in it's prime. I arrived and said hi to my new buddies. We exchanged pleasantries, "Hey, how's the bite?", etc, etc. And I commenced casting. I looked down only to see a HUUUGE black cloud of sand eels 3 feet in front of me, in the shallow water. WHOA! MUCHO BAIT-O! There must be fish here! I threw a sand eel fly out that one of the locals had given me with his words of advice, "Use this...it's the only thing they'll hit! Trust me..." I cast for 30 minutes with the magic fly but to no avail. I thought about those spearing bait I had snagged the previous day and changed my fly to a blue and white clouser that Corbinafly had sent me in the mail before my travels. Low and behold, 5 minutes later, I felt that o-so-pleasant tug on the end of my line...hello Mr. Fluke! Phew...stripe off!

After another quiet 30 minutes a handful of locals packed it up and headed out..."No fish here today," they mumbled as they trudged through the sand behind me. "Missed the damn bite again," one guy said. Hmmmm. With West Coast persistence (my father calls it "stubborn" but he doesn't fish!) I keep casting. One of the more friendly guys is casting his spinner next to me. I remember one of the hints another local told me, "Slooow stripping...the stripahs like it slow...they're kinda dumb." So with a slooow strip I retrieve my line...strip...strip...tighten...and tzzzzzzz... There goes my line like a bat outta hell! My line is flying off the sand where it's coiled...my heart starts racing and the local guy next to me runs over! "That sounds like a stripah to ME!" he hollars! I strip line in, let it out, strip it in, let him run then finally get him into shallow water where the local guy can snatch it up for me! "Oh please," I'm thinking, "please don't let this guy drop my fish!!!!!" He hands it over to me and I hand over my Optio. It's photo time! I was the happiest person on the beach that morning! The guy high fived me and I released my first stripah back into the Atlantic! I didn't see another fish caught that morning, on sand eels or on the fly. As the sun rose I packed it up, probably with that grin still on my face!

 

I had a fantastic time on the island. Missed my Pacific Ocean though. The Atlantic was kind to me. I'll be back for more stripahs, bonies and maybe a bluefish or two!