Reader Report - Early August Fishing Inshore and Off

by Steve McGonagle

With summer racing by I took some time off work to fish our home waters of Southern New England.  My son Brenden and I decided to do consecutive trips, first offshore on my boat the Patriot Six  and then inshore on his boat the Switchback.  Offshore we targeted bluefin south of the Vineyard, and the next day we targeted fluke at several of our favorite spots around Newport.

August 9: While running at 27 knots Brenden spotted a school of bluefin cruising just below the surface.  Radio reports were indicating breaking fish on massive pods of halfbeaks but not a lot of hook ups in the fleets chasing these fish.  It was milk pond calm and the fish we saw were pushing water.  It was clear that they were not on bait, which  we knew right away gave us a shot at coming tight.  He pulled back the throttles back and positioned the boat ahead of the pushing fish and hollered for me to get lines out quickly.  The first two bluefin pulled the lines out of my hands as I was setting in and we were tight to two 50-inch fish.  I did not bother trying to set in any more lines as we had our hands full with both 50-wides screaming off line.

Brenden fought one fish and his friend Tyler, our third crew member, fought the other as I maneuvered the boat, managed the cockpit.  The fights went well but we lost the smaller fish at the boat. We harpooned the larger fish and dragged it through the tuna door.  High fives and tuna steaks!

August 10: The following day we cleaned up Patriot Six and got a late start on Switchback, heading to the Newport grounds to find fluke.  Brenden was captain, calling the shots and choosing the spots.  There were a couple  charter boats working the area for fluke, but not the areas we wanted to fish.  Brenden wanted to move the boat after any drift that did not produce, and that’s what we did.  We started by Rose island, made our way over to the Newport Harbor area for one keeper fluke in three drifts, then across the water to the Conanicut mooring field.  We picked up a few 20-inch fluke in this area, but the drift was slow and we were not happy with the lack of bottom contour.

With a few nice fish in the box we made our way under the bridge and up to Gould Island point.  The tide was incoming so the drift was “uphill.”  As soon as I dropped I was on with a heavy fluke, which we boated.  Only a minute later Brenden’s rod doubled over with line pulling fast off the drag of his Avet.  “Darn, I am tight with a bluefish,” he said.  He casually reeled and we chatted as the fish continued to rip line occasionally.  Though I was convinced he had a bluefish, I casually remarked “you know, you just might just have Flukezilla pulling all that line out on you.”  He smiled.  As the fish neared the boat Brenden saw the leader, then some color from the rig and said to me “its a…it looks like its a…Dad get the gaff! QUICKLY, GET THE GAFF!”  And we gaffed “Flukezilla.”  It was easily the biggest fluke either of us had ever seen in 15 years of fishing Rhode Island waters.  We took some pictures and will forever cherish the memories of these father and son trips, both of which had the fish Gods smiling upon us.