Category : Marine Life
What’s better than a microburst of birds, bait and bass materializing right before your eyes? Your boat is drifting with the current through a fog covered rip line and you hear the high pitch squawking of terns just a few yards away. Could they be working over a school of fish? There they are! Is [...]
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A feeding frenzy showing bay anchovies being ambushed underwater by cigar minnows and a fish-eye view of the perils baitfish face when schooling up against a breakwater. Striped bass, triggerfish, stingray, tautog, black sea bass, rudderfish are also highlighted in order to provide fishermen with a highly detailed anglers-eye view of bait.
Bay anchovies packed like sardines in a can
This dive on the last day of July was simply extraordinary. I entered the water at the base of the breakwater near East Matunuck state beach and proceeded to dive the entire length of the wall, up and back. Along the way I stopped to film the “trials of life” that the hapless bay anchovies were experiencing.
I hope the video gives you a feel for what it must be like to be under constant attack from all sides. The cigar minnows are not a common sight in our waters and a lot of bathers have no idea that giant stingrays weighing several hundred pounds could be cruising right off the beach.
Each year more and more triggerfish show up and the same can be said for jacks and banded rudderfish. The tautog were along the bottom where the sand reaches the stone wall, while the bass cruised the mid-water zone looking for a quick meal. I saw flounder, lots of sea bass, cunners, snapper blues, baby peanut bunker, silversides, scup, and a host of other marine life. It was a fantastic dive, in so much as there was always something going on; it’s always nice to see a healthy ocean with lots of biodiversity.
Call them mahi-mahi, dolphinfish, dolphin, dorado, bulls, chickens, or peanuts, but tie into them on light tackle and you’ll call them one amazing gamefish. Mahi are among the fastest growing fish in the sea with a short lifespan of only four or five years. They don’t match the strength of a tuna, wahoo, amberjack, Cubera, [...]
Call them false albacore, little tunny, fat albert, albies, funny fish, or as New Englanders refer to them, “Apple Knockers.” But don’t confuse them with bonito and bring them home to eat. These amazing game fish are members of the tuna clan and can reach speeds of up to 40 miles per hour. This slide [...]
Hunt for Game Fish – Above & Below Water Thursday, July 12, 2012 I met up with Captain Wayne Wood at Barn Island, Stonington, CT After transferring my equipment to the “4-ME”, a 27′ Conch center console, we shoved off with high hopes for a productive day of filming, diving and fishing around Fishers Island [...]
Laptew Chronicles
Rhode Island’s Web of Life
Part 1
River Otter
River otters can live 10 to 20 years. These three and half to four foot long mammals depend on clean water and a healthy supply of fish, frogs, snakes, mice, birds, crayfish and mussels.
- The river otter is a long, sleek, muscular animal
- When otters dive their ears and nose close
River otters digest and metabolize food so quickly that food passes through their intestines within an hour.
The web feet and slim profile allow otters to fly through the water
Click to enlarge any of these images
Snowy Egret
The snowy egret stalks the marshes, coves and rivers for small bait fish such as mummichog, spearing, sand eel or sand lance
Snowy egret charges a school of mummichogs
The egret strikes with lightning speed
The snowy seizes the mummi behind the gills
A good squeeze and a shake and the mummi is about to be eaten
Snowy egret gulps down a fat little mummichog
Muskrat
These semi-aquatic rodents feed primarily on aquatic plants and they can be found in slow-moving-streams, coastal and freshwater marshes, lakes, ponds and swamps.
A muskrat swims toward the shoreline
- With a mouthful of weeds the muskrat heads for its den
They are prodigious and can produce up to 3 litters per year, each with 6 to 7 young. Breeding takes place from late March through July.
Osprey – The Fish Hawk
When the ospreys return to Rhode Island they start tidying up their nests with sticks and grass. Osprey mate for life and return to the same nest year after year.
Osprey building nest with marsh grass and twigs
A full load of nesting material
Osprey grasps herring in its talons
River Herring
Alewives and blueback herring have an enormous impact on the environment and they are a vital component to the food chain.
A group of volunteers help the Rhode Island Dept. of Fish of Wildlife scoop out and transport herring to an aerated truck. These herring will be transferred to the Pawcatuck watershed where they will fortify 1300 acres and 8 stream miles.
Herring Heroes scoop and transport fish
River herring stack up in a shallow pool
Worker dumps herring into transport truck
Check back for Rhode Island’s Web of Life – Part 2
Trout Fishing Action – Silver Spring Lake, North Kingstown
The parking lots were full at Silver Spring Lake
The 2012 RI trout season started at the crack of dawn on Saturday, April 14 and this popular North Kingstown fishing hole was loaded with anglers and fish.
The action was fast and furious as the sun started to climb above the trees. Every stretch of open shoreline was lined with kids and adults eager to catch their limit of trout.
It was estimated that 20,000 anglers would participate in the annual ritual known simply as “Opening Day.”
Silver Spring is stocked with trout from the nearby Lafayette hatchery where over 120,000 pounds of trout are raised each year.
Within minutes of the start of the 2012 season trout were being hauled in right and left.
The quality and size of the fish had everyone smiling.
Boats jockey for position and the shoreline is crammed with anglers
Click on any image to enlarge
A fist full of rainbow trout
A true RI Veteran Angler
Father and son fishing fun
A young angler's rainbow is worth a second look
Another fine fish for the stringer
Another trout comes to the net
There was no generation “gap” here
Anglers young and old fish side by side
A rainbow gets air
We don't need a larger boat — just larger trout
Berkeley Power Bait Proved Highly Effective
Chartreuse colored power bait was very effective
I didn’t see one kid texting, or on a cell phone, they were actually in the real world and not engulfed in virtual realty. We just might be able to reel in the younger generation with what we always though was great fun.
Even pop tarts taste better on a wood fire
Get out there and fish. Take a kid with you. Better yet, take an old fart fishing too! When’s was the last time you took your Dad fishing!
Not all herring gulls are at the landfill
It’s nice to see a herring gull actually eating a river herring and not a french fry.
A herring gull grabs an alewife in the Narrow River
With an expandable throat, these most common of all the “seagulls” in our area, are quite capable of wolfing down an entire river herring.
herring gull swallows an alewife in one gulp
Headwaters of the Pettaquamscutt or Narrow River
Gilbert Stuart's birthplace is the site of a fish ladder
Anadromous Fish Return from the Sea to Spawn
Alewives return to their natal river
Catadromous Species Spawn at Sea and Their Offspring Journey into Freshwater
glass eels
After hatching in the Sargasso Sea, “glass eels” or elvers infiltrate streams, creeks and marshes in Rhode Island
These resilient animals can live over 20 years in our ponds and lakes before heading back to the Sargasso Sea to spawn and die
- American Eel