Atlantic menhaden landing bass for anglers

  Jay Ancgil of Coventry with bass to 17 pounds he and friend Mike Swain caught in the East Passage this week live lining pogies (Atlantic menhaden).

 

Frank Travis of North Kingstown with the 24” fluke he caught west of New Harbor, Block Island this week.

Mike Wade (owner of Watch Hill Outfitters, Westerly) weighs in Braeden Giller’s 7 pound, 8 once summer flounder (fluke) he caught off Misquamicut State Beach this week.

 

Atlantic menhaden landing bass for anglers

Atlantic menhaden or pogies as they are locally refereed to are a great bait fish for striped bass.  This week many of them were eaten by striped bass as anglers throughout the region used this great forage fish as bait.

Menhaden are an important part of the food chain. H. Bruce Franklin, a professor at Rutgers University, is author of The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America said, “This is what the menhaden do best: they get eaten. Game fish and seabirds, sharks and whales all seek out these oily fish as a favorite meal, making menhaden a crucial link in the ocean food chain.”

Atlantic menhaden are also roving filter feeders, converting algae into energy and thus reducing nutrient loads in bays and covers. An adult menhaden, through its unique filtering gills, is able to process up to 4 gallons of water per minute or a million gallons of water every 180 days. Multiply this by the number of menhaden in any given area and this is an amazing amount of water being filtered, a reduction of nutrients means fewer algae blooms and ultimately more oxygen for all fish.

Most (80%) of the anglers reporting they hooked up with a striped bass in the past three weeks said they were using Atlantic menhaden as bait.

 To catch live menhaden to use as bait, anglers cast a net for them or snag them with a weighted treble hook.  They are generally brought back to the boat and a hook is put through the bridge of the nose or back and then the fish is put back into a school of live menhaden. 

You can also use dead menhaden as bait (bought at a bait shop) fresh or frozen.  Some prefer to fish the menhaden whole others cut it in half, yet others chunk it up and use large pieces.  How anglers use dead menhaden as bait largely relies on what the striped bass want.  Some days/seasons they want it chunked, other times they want it whole and sometimes they won’t bite anything but live menhaden.  Some anglers use a weight slide to get the bait down to the striped bass.

Another method working to catch striped bass this spring is trolling with umbrella rigs (mimics a small school of bait fish) or trolling with tube & worm.  However, the larger fish in bays, coves and rivers caught so far this season have been landed using live Atlantic menhaden as bait.

Where’s the bite

Striped bass.  John Littlefield of Archie’s Bait & Tackle, Riverside said, “The bass are getting larger.  Albert Bettencourt of Riverside weighed in a 33 pound striped bass for the Striper Maine Tournament which took second place.  His grandson took second place too in the youth division with a 24 pound striped bass.  The largest fish we heard of from shore at Sabin Point last week was a 38” bass.  They even landed bass from shore at Colt State Park. One customer said there were 40 boats Sunday far up the Providence River.”  Angler Jason Ancgil of Coventry fished with Mike Swain Sunday and they landed bass to 17 pounds using live menhaden in the East Passage.  Mike said, “There were about 20 or 30 boats in the area, we moved a bit to say out of all the congestion.”  Manny Macedo of Lucky Bait & Tackle, Warren said, “We weighed in a 42.4 pound striped bass lass week.  The fish are getting large with the smaller fish being caught on umbrella rigs and the large ones with live pogies.  Last week we also heard of fish caught off Poppasquash Point and Colt State Park, Bristol.” Mike Wade of Watch Hill Outfitters, Westerly said, “Anglers are catching the bass with bunker. We have so much of it around.”  Julian Trozzi of Breachway Bait & Tackle, Charlestown said yesterday, “We have no large fish from the beach yet but anglers are catching school bass in Ninigret Pond and from the end of the Breachway with keepers mixed in.”

Summer flounder (fluke) fishing has been improving along the southern coastal shore.  We weighed in a seven pound, eight ounce fish caught by Braeden Biller right off Misquamicut Beach over the weekend.” said Mike Wade of Watch Hill Outfitters.  Frank Travis of Wakefield landed a 24” fluke when fishing on the west side of Block Island in 55 to 70 feet of water.  “Fishing at the mouth of the Sakonnet, and in the Newport Bridge/Ft. Adams area was good last week.” said Manny Macedo of Lucky Bait.  Littlefield from Archie’s Bait said, “Hot places for fluke include the Sakonnet and Newport areas but also we had reports of fish being taken at Warwick Light as well.  Capt. Frank Blount, owner of the Frances Fleet, said, “Much improved fluke fishing this week with better numbers along with some real nice quality slabs hitting the deck of the Gail Frances (party boat) Wednesday through Saturday. On both Thursday and Saturday's outing nearly one third of the keepers were in the jumbo category (4 lbs or better). Biggest fish of the week was the fine 8 lb. slab.”

Atlantic menhaden (pogies) commonly used for striped bass bait have been spotted in large numbers  in Narragansett Bay, Mt. Hope Bay and in south county area in rivers, coves, salt ponds and sanctuaries.

Scup are just making their presence known with reports of anglers starting to land scup in several areas , not in large numbers yet but few anglers are targeting them at this time.

Offshore fishing is just starting.  Chris Young of North Kingstown said, “We fished the Dump and several other places Sunday and found fish but we could not get them to rise.  About three miles south of Block Island we came across a large school of school bluefin tuna but just could not hook-up.”

“Fresh water trout fishing has slowed; hopes are that DEM restocking will reinvigorate things later this spring.  However, the pickerel bite was very strong this week at the Kickemuit Reservoir and some nice carp have been caught in the Blackstone River.” said Manny Macedo of Lucky Bait.  “The bass bite has been good at Echo Lake, Barrington along with a decent catfish bite.” said John Littlefield of Archie’s Bait.