The Fish Wrap Writer Blog
For more than 20 years, we have been learning from and writing about outdoorsmen and women who fish, hunt, hike, pause, and sometimes just look around. Fish Wrap has been published over 480 times. Here you will find articles, interviews, reports, laughs, a few stretched truths (that’s true), and an unfortunate number of obituaries from good folks we have lost.
Please search, enjoy, and let me know if you know someone who we should meet.
Waders wet & hands dirty: that’s Trout Unlimited’s Jeff Yates
The cell phone went dead four times in half an hour. From Pennsylvania’s Route 80, Jeff Yates kept calling back because our conversation about conservation was important and timely, in light of an administration bent on overturning basic environmental protections,...
Science never quits (even if you delete it from an EPA website) & fishing for data on URI’s Cap’n Bert
Joe Zottoli told me to be at the dock for exactly 8:50 a.m. It was very clear that details were important, like being on time. He’s studying Biological Oceanography at URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography, runs the deck of their 53’ workhorse research vessel, the...
RISAA, Fish & the Kids Who Love Them
“Whatever I catch, I’m going to say it was three times bigger.” 13 year old Tim Roberts started a day of fishing by sinking my writing plan. Drifting along Warwick Neck in Captain Tim Wordell’s bright white Cobia, the younger Tim was a camper with the R.I....
Sometimes water makes us suffer and like it.
“Ah summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it,” wrote Russell Baker. July sometimes means fishing cools as waters warm for she is a long month of hot water pushing trout to precious few cool pools, black sea bass to dark deep wrecks and stripers...
A Fish Whisperer & An End to the Trailer Trash Saga
So I called the Fish Whisperer. Now is when stripers really head for Block Island but they are fickle, their appetites fluctuate and frustrate. Catching them doesn’t seem to be as easy as it was years back. That said, Islanders enjoy a long view of those beaches...
How to find love On The Rocks & other fishing classics
It was a long awaited Friday night fights in South County salt ponds. Finally a full day of warming sun brought cinder worms from the mud to a muddled windy surface so the dance could be begin. It was a worm hatch like you read about, which we hope you read about...
Crazy Albert and catching two rainbows with one cast
Dock talk is still all about big bass keeping to themselves at the top of Narragansett Bay. South coast fishermen are finding piles of schoolie salt pond stripers but few keepers. Cinder worms have made only fleeting appearances while sand worms appear to be...
How to find big bass, get out-fished and then find public access to a public beach that’s pretty much private
The big bass continue to hold tight to the top of Narragansett Bay. Live pogies are still the best bet for the big girls and several fishermen have reported stripers in the 28”-40” range. Down south, the salt ponds are producing plenty of schoolie bass action....
How To Catch A Beast of a Bass & A Shaky Cinder Worm
The big fishing news is that Cape Cod fisherman Jeff Fortin outlasted a 64.6 pound striper in Buzzards Bay. It’s a seriously impressive fish. So early in the season, it’s hopefully a good sign that fish of such size have already moved in to feed on pogies and...
Learning from local fishermen
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse meets with RI commercial fishermen to better understand catches and the science of data harvesting on open seas.
Public Access & Losing It
Narragansett Bay is teeming with stripers. It’s easy to access them from beaches, breakwalls and kayaks, from river mouths to the upper Bay and the Taunton River. Our CRMC provides a wonderful, interactive map of public access spots, which you can find at...
stripers, shooters, wardens, thieves and Jimmy Chappel. That’s a full Fish Wrap week.
This is the time. Bucktails, teaser flies, Cocahoe minnows. Seven foot medium weight rods for kayaks in salt ponds, ten foot surf rods for long beach casts. Buckies, pogies, silversides. D.O.A. jerkbaits, topwater schoolie action and everything tipped with squid....
RIDEM regulations hearings announced
RI DEM will hold public hearing on draft regulations for recreational fishing, hunting, falconry and parks regulations on the following two dates Monday, May 8, 5:30 p.m. at DEM Headquarters | Room 300 235 Promenade Street Providence, Rhode Island and then...
Bill, Beers, Bill, Bears, Bluebacks, Buckies. That’s no fluke…
If there’s water involved, Bill McCusker is willing to get wet. He’s a tireless volunteer and advocate, a guy who collects water samples for URI’s Watershed Watch, has happily volunteered countless hours to the Wood Pawcatuck Watershed Association, dragged hoses...
Wailing the West Wall with Korkers, old flannel & the Bill Dance toss…
For many fishermen, once the opening of trout season has passed, it’s all about Galilee, Jerusalem and wailing the west wall. That ragged run of blocks and rocks is known for being one of the earliest spots to find a new season’s first stripers. Word races through...
DEM STOCKS PONDS WITH GOLDEN TROUT FOR FREE FISHING WEEKEND
The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management has announced a Free Fishing Weekend for Saturday, May 6 – Sunday, May 7. Anglers are invited to fish without a fishing license or trout conservation stamp in the state's freshwater streams, rivers, ponds and...
How to mix cold water, Slim Jims & Garrett Hardin
Cold water, piles of trash bags, new flies, cold beer, stripers with lice and if you’re lucky, those mighty anadromous heros of Spring, river herring. So that was Earth Day weekend, 2017. Fisherman Matt Toker a set up a Facebook page called 401 Fishing and has been...
Spring & The Mystery of Dissapearing ROW Signs
Each Spring, along with the return of ospreys and Florida license plates, comes the disappearance of public access signs. Surely it pays to do your homework before you double click the alarm and push through bayberries and bull briers to launch your new kayak. When...
How to clean up your house & drink some clean water
This post originally appeared in the Southern RI Newspapers. Cold water, piles of trash bags, new flies, cold beer, stripers with lice and if you’re lucky, those mighty anadromous heros of Spring, river herring. So that’s Earth Day weekend, 2017. Fisherman Matt...
Cold Water, Cold Brew at Whalers
If someone offered you a few hours of down time, chatting about rivers and fish, in an old mill, in a brewery in that old mill, filled with lots of fishy art and people tying flies and many good folks from the local Trout Unlimited chapter, would you find a few...