If Nantucket fluke don't count, do RI blackfish?
This pb 10.3# fell to a green crab on a jig in 40 feet last week.
A seesaw battle until it finally got scooped intoView attachment 55057 the net.
In the rush to get this beautiful fish back in the water, I didn't get a real good picture, so here's 3/4 of the fish. lol
If Nantucket fluke don't count, do RI blackfish?
This pb 10.3# fell to a green crab on a jig in 40 feet last week.
A seesaw battle until it finally got scooped intoView attachment 55057 the net.
In the rush to get this beautiful fish back in the water, I didn't get a real good picture, so here's 3/4 of the fish. lol
Went out and got the bait, now we just need the weather. I consider baby whites to be "tog crack" here on the mid-South Shore.
View attachment 55101
Went out and got the bait, now we just need the weather. I consider baby whites to be "tog crack" here on the mid-South Shore.
View attachment 55101
I can catch all the spiders I can ever use for the rest of my life in a single night. Even plenty of tiny little spiders. I have repeatedly tried them, and have never gotten so much as a single tap on them, ever. I guess I should try again.
I can catch all the spiders I can ever use for the rest of my life in a single night. Even plenty of tiny little spiders. I have repeatedly tried them, and have never gotten so much as a single tap on them, ever. I guess I should try again.
Fabulous weather on Friday and Saturday really encouraged the North Fork Tog to put on the feed bag. Friday’s 3-man split charter found us first on my favorite CT reef with instant action on the end of the flood for about an hour. Initially all the Tog were short but as the tide began to slow and shifted to the ebb the big fish really turned on. In a little more than an hour the full boat limit was reached with several quality fish including 2 in the 5# class, a solid 6# fish, and the largest we have seen so far this season, a beautiful 8# specimen.
With an early limit under our belts, we moved into the shallows to play C&R for a couple more hours on the light jigging tackle. Once again, a solid bite was had the entire time we spent on this piece. Many shorts were landed here but we did manage to boat and release at least 4 more keepers during the spree. Even the Capt. Got a shot at dropping the jig for a little while and decked a healthy keeper who was safely returned.
Saturday found my long-term customers, the John party, looking to repeat our success of Friday as well as many previous season trips. Back to the reef and interestingly the keeper Tog were a lot more cooperative on the end of the flood this time. With an extra hour of tide to work the guys put 8 keepers in the 16-18” range in the box before we began to swing into the ebb tide cycle. Based upon Friday’s results I expected another good showing of real quality fish. Unfortunately, the real big guys seemed to change their pattern much to my surprise. Don’t get me wrong, the guys still caught a ton of fish and easily limited the boat by 11 a.m. but the top 2 fish were only in the 5# class that day. Still nothing to be upset about, but I guess sometimes I get a little spoiled. With an early finish I let the guys do some C&R jigging while I cleaned the catch before cruising home on a flat calm Sound.
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Looks like Capt. Mike and HH4H had a rip-roaring start to their seasons! Very nice!
Matts - So, whites come in various sizes and I believe there are two species (at least). Maybe "rock" crabs and "Jonah" crabs? Anyway, for the above pictured little bite-sized morsels I put them on whole, legs uncut, with a little bit of a top-shell cracking. The somewhat larger ones I cut in two. For those, the big decisions are top shell on or off? Legs cut? Not? Really not much different than fishing greenies.
The real difference between baby whites and small greens is that the baby whites are a bit softer, shell-wise, and so you have to be a bit quicker on the strike - or they'll dust you for sure. Think of a true green-colored green crab, that's about how the shell of a baby white is. Way less tough than the orange-colored greens. So "be quick or be cleaned" is the mantra.
The other difference is that the fish seem to genuinely HATE the baby whites and so the resulting hits are usually pretty ferocious, so you've got to be ready. They seem to want to really kill them quick. This is unlike the smaller greens, which they will hit that way at times, but generally there's a bit more of a pre-strike diddling of the greenie bait, before the big bite.
Not so with the baby whites. I recall one trip that the fish were trying to literally rip the rod out of our hands using the baby whites. That was many years ago on breezy day ay 17 on my boat, with my old friend Capt. Rick Smith of the gorgeous charter boat Miss Beryl. What a trip that one was. Killer thumping bites from really nice-sized deep-water fish. In fact now that I think about that trip, I believe he was the one that first introduced me to the use of baby whites. I've looked for and prized them ever since. Rick knows his blackfishing, no doubt about that!
The big white "Soup Crabs" are a different matter. Those things are tough as hell. So tough in fact that when I use them (typically very late in the season is when I can get 'em) I end up with sores on the area just above my thumb from the crab shears wearing out my skin. It really hurts after a long day of cutting those monsters - and the sores stay raw longer than one would think. Anyway, I like the monster whites in deep water, at the very end of the season (which is now a month earlier than I used to fish them, in places like 17).
Oh well, even though I always felt that the deep bite didn't really get going 'til the week before 'Xmas, and peaked in early Jan., we can no longer do that fishing, right? Just as well, power washing the Lep with icicles hanging off the hull (and me) is no longer so appetizing as it once was. And shoveling snow out of the cockpit is really nothing I still look forward to. Not to mention being an "Arctic Ice Breaker" coming out of my canal. That sound of crunching ice on the hull is not very comforting, I'll tell you that . . .
Oh, and just in case you might think "small crabs, small fish," these were victims of Lep-caught baby whites:
A true DD, at a bit over 10lbs:
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And a nice 17lb Baccala that I pulled off a piece in 45', right off the beach (of all places):
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Went on a blackfish trip out of point view marina in Rhode Island Saturday on the Sound Bound Escape limited load 16 peeps. The morning had a nip in the air but it quickly warmed up and we shed down to t-shirts eventually. The owner Brendan was the Capt and Anthony and Jimmy did a great job on the deck. We had fish in the 7-8-9 lb class plus an eventual boat limit with a few seabass and cod mixed in. The people on board were a great group and knew what they were doing blackfishing. Most used conventional rigs, we were not very shallow. Keys that day seemed to be a claws off shell cracked crab and leave a little slack in the line. I thought they ran a great trip and they also have another boat in that marina, the sound bound II if you are thinking Rhode Island. View attachment 55340
whos that handsome guy in the back sticking his head in the pic,,,,,,,,,,,,MTB great report there catching them tog!!!!!!! keep it up,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,><)))):>
><))):>
Went on a blackfish trip out of point view marina in Rhode Island Saturday on the Sound Bound Escape limited load 16 peeps. The morning had a nip in the air but it quickly warmed up and we shed down to t-shirts eventually. The owner Brendan was the Capt and Anthony and Jimmy did a great job on the deck. We had fish in the 7-8-9 lb class plus an eventual boat limit with a few seabass and cod mixed in. The people on board were a great group and knew what they were doing blackfishing. Most used conventional rigs, we were not very shallow. Keys that day seemed to be a claws off shell cracked crab and leave a little slack in the line. I thought they ran a great trip and they also have another boat in that marina, the sound bound II if you are thinking Rhode Island.
Get these men in uniform ✊
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