A Disappointing Day for Stripers

Steve Pickering lands a double.

Black sea bass saved the day as
there were poor numbers of stripers
around the south shore today.

You've probably seen a lot of recent reports that tell about the terrific fishing that is going on along RI's south shore beachfront. Well, my brother and I headed down there and covered the entire area from Matunuck to Westerly in a boat.  We landed exactly one small schoolie.
Like every kind of fishing, nothing is a sure bet. Fall striper fishing, often a hit or miss deal, was a big miss today. This outing was a disappointment to say the least.  We saw only one area that had a small amount of bait and some birds diving,  This spot had a few stripers breaking, but there were so few and the action was so sporadic that we could only catch one schoolie. Another telling fact was that we saw just about no one fishing from shore for miles.
To save the day, we decided to try for black sea bass.  We fared much better with them, catching about 20 of them with most being small keepers. We located pods of them using the fishfinder and we focused on those spots that seemed to have a lot of them.  The hot ticket for catching them was jigs on the bottom.  Zoom flukes and Cocahoes mounted on jigheads were our best lures for the black sea bass.