9/3 Bonito and Albies

Past 2 days I've had some luck catching some Bonito, and no luck catching Albies, but there are certainly both around now in fairly good numbers.

We have a New Moon and some favorable conditions now with a calm ocean, these are typically the conditions I'd expect to see a decent shore bite for Albies, but in the case of 2024, we have this huge population of Bonito around, and that is the primary "Tunoid" that's showing right now. The Bones have been thick to the east for months at this point, but have just started showing up strong here in Point Judith.

I went to the West Wall yesterday afternoon, arriving around 1:30pm, to see a couple anglers leaving who reported it was pretty dead. Immediately as I arrived I saw a small pod of Albies in range of the wall, popped up once, just a few fish, then popped up again by the fish trap, then vanished. Needless to say, nobody caught an Albies from that showing, if anyone else even saw it, there were only a few anglers out by this point in the day. Maybe 40 minutes later, a sizeable school of Bonito appeared and ran back and forth along the wall between the Fish Trap and the Beach. Problem was, they were extremely finicky and nobody caught a single fish in the hour they showed. The hour after however, some fish were caught. They stopped showing, but stuck around, and several were caught Blind casting, I caught one on a 7/8th chartreuse Epoxy, and another guy caught 2 on a Mag Minnow. Another angler fishing the first bend caught a couple, don't know what he was using, the point is though, they bit once they stopped blitzing, if that makes sense. All typical size, 3-4lbs.

Today I took my bike to the beach in the morning. I biked a few miles and saw plenty of fish. 90% were out of range, but I caught 2 Bonito from times when some were showing in range. Both fish hit a 40 gram metal, one hit as I was retrieving up from the bottom, the other popped once and I casted at it and it bit. I also saw 100% Albies, a nice school in easy range, ran along the beach, and I casted into them several times, first with 40 gram metal, then epoxy jig, and never got a sniff. That kind of sucked, but at least they are around. Heard a similar report from a friend in a boat where he found a nice big school of Albies and caught 0 even getting countless shots at them. Finicky fish.. Hopefully that changes when some fishier weather rolls through in the days ahead.

I checked a couple more spots after I left the beach and saw Bonito in every spot. The wall, and the shorelines along ganset all had fish. I fished the afternoon along the rocks in Narragansett and between me and my friend Mike we caught 7 bones between 2:30-4:30pm, all blind casting.

These Bonito have been around awhile now, but at this point, they're everywhere, and probably will be awhile. Hopefully we see the biomass of Albies show up soon.