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.
Being a bit grumpy, drawing the line and helping firefighters
So June 18 is National Go Fishing Day. Why this day is important, I have no idea. It has all the hallmarks of a Hallmark holiday, something derived to sell more hooks and licenses like National Rotisserie Chicken Day sells cards, Hummels-not the ones who periscope...
Smackin’ it with poppers, Brian Hall and a kayak
There are big fish all around us. Up North, where Narragansett Bay becomes the Providence River, menhaden are filling coves and the bass know it. The best tip right now is to liveline a few snagged pogies and work the schools. It can be a crowded place, especially...
Captain Jerry Sparks Guides Us Through the Cinder Worms
It’s one of the most exciting, challenging, rewarding and frustrating fishing events of our striper season: the cinder worm hatch. Salt ponds with dark mud bottoms and skinny water corners where strong tides drain edges will warm with longer days and if all...
You Can Own a House On the Beach but You Can’t Own the Beach
The last few weeks of May are absolutely packed with anticipation. Route 1 carries a steady load of trucks trailers and boats, sticky windows in Green Hill and Matunuck start to open in cottages suffocating in the shadows of castles, small boats run the tides in...
CJ Safford Lands a Golden Trout & Firemen Come Out Shooting!
This week we get to meet a cool young fisherman, meet some firemen, scratch the surface on a noise issue and visit the state house. Big week. Most importantly, awesome angler CJ Safford from Richmond landed a fine golden trout at the Browning Mill Pond last...
Elisa, Peter, Mike & Al-Tackle Makers & Sellers
Fresh off her Nu-2-U Used Tackle Sale and back on almost regular business hours, Elisa and Matt at Snug Harbor Marina have brought in lots more green crabs for a welcome increase in tautog catching as cod fishing starts to fade around the old Fairway buoy and spots...
A Fish Wrap Kind of Calendar
Everyone needs a calendar, especially one crammed with free space and a few penciled in notes about fishing contests and meetings to talk more about fishing. To o help keep us organized through the rush of this new season, here are a few key events and meetings to...
no pictures this week, just embarrassment & some jellyfish
Being a writer often puts you in the receiving end of random judgments from readers, pigeonholing you as decent, mildly above average or worse, worthless. With that in mind, it’s interesting what we learned while sitting with my young son, across a table from a few...
Striper Migration, Greg Sansone hits a home run & herring get a helping hand
The Spring striper migration has begun and from the doldrums of winter we quickly move to a packed spring calendar. Bass are really feeding in the salt ponds and rivers as water temperatures begin to march upwards. Avid fisherman Greg Sansone was in Maryland for a...
I’d Like To Thank The Academy…
Thanks to all you Fish Wrap readers! Our 3 part series, "The Fishermen Protecting RI Brook Trout" just won first place for Best Newspaper Column from the NE Outdoor Writers Assoc., an editorial on poaching in The Fisherman won 2nd place for Best Opinion, Magazine...
turkeys and walls for lobsters? dam that tonald drump
When you ask a person for an interview, even for just a few questions, the response typically is a pretty standard “sure” or “no thanks”. Lots of people enjoy getting their words or picture in the paper, though you do get the occasional, “Why don’t you mind...
Rhode Island’s Trout Stocked Waters
need to know where all the fish are for this year's Opening Day? courtesy of RI DEM: Rhode Island Freshwater and Anadromous Fisheries Designated Trout Waters All designated trout waters are stocked prior to the opening day of trout season. Those areas that receive...
bill mcwha, local hero. cole hosey, awesome fisherman
A circle on the calendar is one thing but when Benny’s Super Stores finally get the new fishing and hunting licenses from RIDEM, then we really know Spring’s Greatest Day is almost here. There always seems to be a lag between when our licenses expire, on the last...
Niagara Falls, a Super Swamper & Stop Screwing with our 2nd Amendment
It's time for common sense to be the common denominator when it comes to local government and our 2nd Amendment.
gotta #keepemwet and help rivers stay on course
Couldn’t wait to tell, that Bill McWha, South County’s ever observant riverkeeper, about the first arrival of alewives. A few river herring have survived their migration and are running the incoming tide just south of North Kingstown’s Gilbert Stewart museum. They...
For E.B. White
For the wonderful writer, essayist and observer, E.B. White, I offer a fair tribute to your timeless style, love of boats, waters, dogs and all in between. Thank you.
fly fishing explained then we meet warren winders & cheeky reels
Fly fishing specific shows offer a glimpse into this passive riverine alter-universe...Warren is a guy who I suspect could wade into a quiet piece of shallow water, find catch net and release a fine brook trout and not think to tell you about it that night...with 18 zippers and clippers for zingers for nippers and tippets...Spin fishermen tend to be the jeans and t-shirt crowd, often with very clever use of the word “hooker”...
clam cakes, clam dealer under investigation, musty lures &charlie soares
The Narragansett Surf Casters held their annual “Surf Day-New and Used Tackle Sale" last weekend. A few hundred people braved the cold to check out tables piled high with rods, reels, tattered surf bags, collections of old lures not for sale, books and floor mats....
the bears den, scahbro beach & camaros. i swear this is still a fishing column
this column was first published in the RI Central newspapers a few weeks ago...apologies for the delay Well, we finally got ourselves some winter and hopefully our next installment will include reports of good people catching fish through the ice. Patience now, no...
amassing rods, foot fetishes, building rods & abe vigoda. huh.
Fishing rods, and my collection of them, are quizzical things, very much like my wife’s shoes and respective stockpile. Equally we require certain general design specifics, rarely in similar price ranges, although we do not share technical or fashion related needs....