We offer a buyer’s guide for every outdoorsman or woman.

To help us celebrate a much needed holiday, here is the Fish Wrap Gist List 2020 edition for every outdoorsman or woman on your shopping list. Borrowing heavily from the Twelve Days of Christmas routine while inserting a few shameless self-promotions, this will be your best possible collection of just-right needs and wants, all guaranteed to make someone happy because Lord knows we could all use more happy. I’ve provided online shopping links below, but most of the items can also be found in one of the many great tackle shops throughout Rhode Island. Click here to view the full list of tackle shops. We know this guide is coming out a smidge last minute, but good news! Many of these items can still be purchased and make it in time to be under the tree.

Fish Wrap Gift List Item #1

A subscription to the Narragansett Times or any papers in the Southern RI Newspapers family so you can read Fish Wrap with other columns and news pieces. South County’s Ann Perri of AP Tech Services said she purchased a subscription to The Times just to read Fish Wrap each week. Humbled.

Fish Wrap Gift List Item #2

Fish Wrap hats. Obviously, we offer two styles so there’s one for someone special and one for yourself. Perfect in all weather or social scenes, these hats are fun to wear and chances are good you’ll know someone who looks like the grey guy on the front. New in 2020…we also have stickers!

Shameless self-promotion has now concluded (click to purchase.)

 

Fish Wrap Gift List Item #3

Packs of Al’s Goldish Lure Company’s hook bonnets. These American made treble sized covers will save you from shaking your collection of swimmers and poppers like crazy while everyone else is catching schoolies and once you learn how to remove them, you’ll seriously wonder why it took so long to try them.

Fish Wrap Gift List Item #4

Boxes of number eight target 1250 fps loads to shoot a round of sporting clays at the Peace Dale Shooting Preserve in Wakefield. Sven Soderberg and crew have built a fun to shoot course and a second to none public indoor range with a retail shop displaying the best firearms, accessories, and clothing. Don’t skip the Kenny Chesney/ DEEP collection where a country music superstar and a local company have teamed up to create some awareness of our oceans.

Fish Wrap Gift List Item #5

Five minutes of peace. No mask, radio or television, no statistics, closures, pauses or pandemics. Five blessed minutes of peace near a wood stove, with a good book and favorite pet. Five solid minutes to screw our heads back on.

 

Fish Wrap Gift List Item #6

Six inch Gulp! Brand chartreuse Recharge Baits. Lots of crusty guides ignored newfangled artificial baits for years but then one day, some sport came aboard with a hidden Tupperware container of Gulp! and fluke came to the hook just like that. These little plastic miracles would serve us far better if they were made of biodegradable materials since we all know we’re going to pay the price for all this plastic lost to rocks and big bass but until that day, they smell horrible and catch fish.

Bonus Idea

Six point one is the mileage on the Audubon Society’s George B. Parker Woodland trail in Green. It’s a great walk that will remind you how cool it would be to gift someone an Audubon Society membership, which costs only $50.

 

Fish Wrap Gift List Item #7

Seven front pockets on a PFD that will store all necessary items, like whistle, heat reflective blanket, Cliff Bar, signal mirror, LED lights, small flashlight, hand warmers and cell phone in a waterproof case. Find the brand and size that fits just right with adjustable straps for year-round fishing and write your name on the back with an indelible marker. While possibly not the sexiest gift ever, there may be no better gift than something which could save your life. I currently have the NRS Chinook, but there are a lot of great choices out there to choose from. Let the great folks at The Kayak Centre in Wickford, RI, help you pick out a great one for your fishing family member.

 

Fish Wrap Gift List Item #8

Eight and a half by eleven, that’s the size of the notebook you need to record your 2021 fishing, hunting and outdoors adventures. Please gift that someone special the gift of an outdoor legacy so they can record big stories and tiny details. Those words themselves will be a gift in a few years, I promise. These waterproof ones by Rite in the Rain make a nice choice.

 

Fish Wrap Gift List Item #9

Nine packs of circle hooks for the new year as they will be a legal requirement for fishing for striped bass with natural baits. You’ll need to untie those J hooks and nasty trebles and learn to use circles. The new ASMFC Fishery Management Plan defines them as “a non-offset hook where the point is pointed perpendicularly back towards the shank.” That means if you lay the hook flat on a table or such, the hook and barb touch the flat surface.

 

Fish Wrap Gift List Item #10

Ten pound Power Pro braid for your favorite bass fisherperson. We always need more line since it’s always being broken off by hugely gigantic fish, of course. Power Pro is reliable, affordable, and available in different colors and patterns that will fish well in fresh or saltwater. Just like our stories of the one that somehow got away.

 

Fish Wrap Gift List Item #11

Eleven miles on a rolling ferry from Galilee to Block Island affords you time to read Dennis Zambrotta’s Surfcasting Around the Block. His stories came from fishing in the eighties but Dennis’ words will carry you away to when we caught plenty of bass, big bass, on cold November nights around The Church at Southwest point and it’s hard to imagine you won’t end up a supporter of restrictions meant to rebuild striper stocks.

 

Fish Wrap Gift List Item #12

Twelve months to enjoy a Trout Unlimited membership. Glenn Place, President of TU’s Rhode Island’s Chapter has worked tirelessly to build a local group of avid fishermen and conservationists who would love you to join them on the Wood or Narrow River. In the truest spirit of staying focused on fishes, TU spends over eighty-seven cents of every dollar contributed directly on conservation programs.  Think about that when you read about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the demise of the proposed Pebble Mine.

 

In Closing

We all deserve a little extra happy this year, given what a disaster 2020 was on so many fronts. Happy holidays to you all with my sincere thanks for reading the Fish Wrap all year long. Consider sharing the Fish Wrap with some of your friends, if you think they’d enjoy my articles. They can signup at the bottom of this page and receive my newest article every week in their inbox.

Here’s to a very fine 2021 with enough gear and time.

Do You Have A Gift Idea?

Have a gift idea you’d love to share? Let me know in the comments below!