2023 Season Recap:
Overall it was another great season of fishing here in the Ocean State. Here is how I rate it overall by species (this is all opinionated based on my own fishing trips and fellow fishermen I talk to)
Striped Bass: Although not quite as red hot as the 2022 season, there were plenty of big bass to be had in 2023. My largest fish in RI from the kayak was somewhere in the range of 45-48 inches (I didn’t measure) and 45 inches from the shore (although I did land a 48 inch striper at the infamous Cape Cod Canal). The spring run was great, there were many days of numerous over slot fish being caught, especially in May/June. The large biomass of mature stripers were definitely present last season.
The tube & worm was by far the most effective kayak lure for me, it is honestly a cheat code for big striped bass. And chunking bunker at night rewarded me with my largest bass from the rocks, another tried and true method for landing big stripers.
The fall run however was not as action packed as I hoped. Sure there were blitzes to be found, but the frequency/consistency of these feeds were a bit lackluster for me. And the stripers present in these feeds seemed to be mainly schoolies and small slots.
By mid September I can usually find some kind of blitz daily, but even after many miles driven/kayaked there seemed to be days where the ocean front was lifeless. I know other anglers that also complained about a slow fall last season.
What’s to blame for this? Well one factor is user error, there was more than one occasion where I just picked the wrong spot to fish while other areas had blitzes going off.
Another factor could be the growing reports of declining striped bass populations, specifically a low stock of schoolie sized bass due to poor spawns. But this is a hotly debated issue and I am not a qualified marine biologist/fisheries expert.
We also had a string of nasty weather this fall that produced inches of heavy rain and blistering winds, dirtying the water and pushing fish out of usually reliable spots. There is a fine line of stormy weather sparking great bites, and stormy weather being too intense and shutting down the fishing, and I think we mainly experienced the latter.
Despite the so/so fall run, I would rate the overall 2023 striper season a 7.5/10 since the spring run & early summer yielded a lot of big bass.
Bluefish: Although I make very few dedicated bluefish outings, there were plenty of gators to go around in 2023. By mid May big aggressive bluefish dominated many of my go to bay spots, unfortunately pushing out a lot of the striped bass. If you wanted to, you could have caught bluefish from sun up to sun down on any plug, many of them well over 30 inches.
And they stayed around well into October. I actually caught a medium sized bluefish on a green crab while fishing for tautog on October 25th. There were a few times during the dog days of summer where even these bluefish seemed scarce, but overall they were around in big numbers.
I would rate the 2023 bluefish season a solid 8/10.
Albies: 2022 was fantastic for albies, 2023 not as much. As I stated before, the fall run was lackluster for me in RI, so naturally the hardtail fishing was not the best. Although I had successful trips targeting albies and bonito from both shore and kayak, I had equally as many skunkings.
I had to bust my ass to find a handful of albies last year, whereas in 2022 I had many outings where I caught 10-15 of them with relative ease. I think the most albies I caught in a single outing this past fall was 5, and many other trips resulted in just 1 or no fish.
Again part of this was user error, I had a few outings where I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I talked to quite a few die hard albie fishermen and many complained about the inconsistency of the albie fishing, especially from the shore. I think the stormy weather played a big factor but when it comes down to it, false albacore are just a tricky fish to predict and we were due for a slower albie season.
However last fall I had the chance to fish in Martha’s Vineyard for the Derby in late September thanks to my buddy Keith, and man it was a blast. Although the weather conditions were horrid (most days were so stormy the ferries had to get diverted), we were able to find some albies and bones on our kayaks in sheltered areas of the island. I highly recommend you check out Martha’s Vineyard in the fall, such a cool fishing oriented town especially during Derby season.
I would rate the RI 2023 albie season a disappointing 5/10.
Blackfish: I target tautog almost exclusively from my kayak, and had a great season as far as keepers were concerned. If I wanted to, I could have limited out on almost every spring/fall blackfish outing. Sadly, my biggest tautog was just a hair under 8 pounds. I did not crack the double digit marker but I know of many reputable charter captains catching blackfish upwards of 18 pounds, the big tog are definitely in Rhode Island.
I rate the blackfishing a 8/10, plenty of keepers to go around.
All Other Bottom Fishing: Aside from targeting blackfish, I typically don’t spend too much time bottom fishing but I made a point to change that in 2023 especially on my kayak. Scup, fluke, cod and black sea bass (all great tableware) seemed to be around in decent numbers last year.
I was able to catch keepers on almost every attempt but on some trips it did not come easy. Usually I had to weed through dozens of short fish before getting a single keeper. I consider fluke fishing my weakest skill, but I brought home numerous summer flounder last year with the biggest coming in at 24 inches.
I rate the overall bottom fishing a 7/10, plenty of keepers present but no true jumbos for me.
