When it comes to saltwater fishing, June is a time of plenty in Southern New England. We have a shot at nearly every popular species in some place or another this month. There are striped bass, fluke, bluefish, porgies, black sea bass, cod, weakfish, blackfish, sharks, and even tuna popping up somewhere, right now, as you read this! We also begin to enter more consistent weather patterns this month, another factor in making fishing better and more enjoyable in June. Perhaps the one downfall to fishing the salt in the sixth month comes in choosing where to begin, but I’ll do my best to help guide you on your journey.
I’ll get to the meat of things shortly, but if you recall last month, I passed along word of new fishing regulations for black sea bass as well as scup/porgy. Well, I gave you the new info for Massachusetts and Connecticut waters, but the ink hadn’t yet dried in the Ocean State. As I figured, it wasn’t long after I hit send on the report that I got word, so here it is for Rhode Island, a little late but officially official just the same. I’ll start with the scup regulations as they are the same as what was approved in Connecticut with changes implemented for both private and for-hire anglers with a new minimum length for harvest across the board set at 10.5 inches. The private angler bag limit remains unchanged at 30-fish per angler, and the season now runs from May – December 31. On the for-hire side, there is a 30-fish bag limit from May 1 – August 31 and November 1 – December 31. The for-hire bonus runs from September 1 – October 31 and increases the bag limit to 40-fish per angler. This provides a great opportunity for both young and old anglers alike, and I am sure I’ll touch upon it in an upcoming report.
On the black sea bass side, not so surprisingly we run into some differences with surrounding states. The private recreational season extends from May 22 through December 31, and the minimum length for harvest has been increased to 16.5 inches. From May 22 – August 26, the bag limit is 2 fish, increasing to 3-fish per angler until the season closes with the New Year. On the for-hire side, the season doesn’t open until June 18 with a 2-fish bag limit until August 31. (You read that right, the for-hire season opens a full 28 days after it does for private anglers! If that isn’t going to cause the proverbial poop storm back at the dock, then I don’t know what will.) Getting back on track, the bag limit then increases to 6-fish per angler until it closes on the final day of the year. Remember, as with all regulations, you must abide by the most restrictive regulations in which you will pass. This means that if you leave from New York, pass through Connecticut, and fish in Rhode Island, you must abide by the state which has the smallest bag limit and the longest minimum length of the lot, as well as be open in all three states, to harvest some fish. It gets confusing, but it is what it is, and I don’t have enough space in a year’s worth of fishing reports to explain exactly how or why we got to where we are!
Ok, on to happier things. Let’s begin with striped bass as June is when the big fish begin to settle into their summer haunts and provide more consistent action as opposed to what we saw in May. Early in the month, you’re still going to primarily encounter migrating fish coupled with those who wintered over across Southern New England, but by month’s end, most fish will be where they’ll be settled for the following three months. Expect to see waves of fish pushing west to east with some coming from inside Long Island Sound and others coming up the South Shore of Long Island. The Sound bass push feed better, earlier, as water temps are warmer, with the South Shore bass getting in on the feed later in the timetable. As I have noted in the past, I feel that the striped bass often arrive long before we as anglers can prove it, but they just don’t feed actively enough to confirm our suspicions. The best example I have to support this theory comes from free divers who report seeing very large schools of striped bass both moving through and settling into the fishing grounds for days if not weeks before rod-and-reelers begin to find action. While we like to tell ourselves that they arrived to coincide with a good trip to seem like we know what we’re talking about, I simply don’t think it is so. I have yet to figure out if this theory is a good thing or bad for my sanity, but if nothing else it provides for some good banter on a slow tide or when the snow is falling in January, and I long for some time with my 7-striped friends.
Even with a general downturn in the population and reduced catches being reported as to what we saw in years past, it is inevitable that when fishing for striped bass some bluefish will be encountered, especially in June. And while our striped friends move in from the south and west, bluefish generally come in from the north and east. Schools of blues can be found early in the season working the waters around Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, following squid as they move inshore towards Buzzards Bay and Block Island Sound to spawn. There is also a good push of blues coming in from the ocean off the South Shore of Long Island, ending up at Montauk and inside Peconic Bay. Some theorize they follow the scup from their wintering grounds, and I cannot refute this assumption as the timing and catching match up. Of late the bluefish bite has been unpredictable at best, but if blues are your target species June can be a good time to do some damage to your tackle.
Last up in June, tuna make their initial push north this month. I give a lot of credit to the first recreational boats that find their own tuna, not relying on someone else’s catch to make a day of it. While the fish are said to be relatively easier to get to bite early in the season, they more than make up for it by being a lot harder to locate. I have seen some very, very big tuna while cod fishing off Block Island in May and will most certainly get some calls from friends who find bluefin and a few scattered yellows popping up between the windmills and the shipping lanes this month. Much of the primary forage is small, and there is almost zero chance of a fleet of boats being out hunting just yet, so you’re going to have to burn some fuel to find success.