Rhode Island
Rhode Island runs the same tautog rules as Massachusetts in October, down to the vessel cap and the step on the 15th. The striped bass slot is the same as Massachusetts and New Jersey too, which makes it the one saltwater rule in this region that is genuinely regional.
Trout stocking
Rhode Island stocked brook and rainbow trout across 24 named waters between the 2nd and the 8th of October, from Alton Pond and Barber Pond through the Blackstone River to Stafford Pond. This is the part of Rhode Island fishing readers ask about most, which is worth saying plainly about a state better known for its salt water.
RI DEM designated trout watersWhat the rules say
- Tautog: 16 inch minimum, only one fish over 21 inches, ten fish per vessel in every period.
- Three fish from 1 August to 14 October, then five fish from 15 October to 31 December. Party and charter run the same schedule.
- Striped bass: one fish per day, 28 inches to under 31 inches, year round.
- Weakfish: one fish, 16 inch minimum, year round.
- Winter flounder is prohibited in Narragansett Bay north of the Colregs Line of Demarcation, and in Potter Pond, Point Judith Pond and the Harbor of Refuge.
Read from Rhode Island DEM's own recreational regulation table. DEM publishes commercial limits on the same page, in different periods and in pounds per day.
What to expect from the fish
Two fisheries rather than one: false albacore and bonito are the headline through the first part of it and are generally gone by the end. The whole state is a short run from deep water, so this is a quarter for standing at a known funnel on the right tide instead of covering ground.
- Striped Bass
Following the bait past Point Judith and along the south shore.
Where they are. Breachways, points and the shoal edges.
- Tautog
Improves every week as the water falls.
Where they are. Rock, including the shallow rock that is not worth fishing earlier in the year.
- Rainbow Trout
The fall-stocked ponds hold fish that were in a truck days earlier.
Where they are. Close to the access points, since they have had no time to move.
Narragansett Bay
Narragansett Bay · Greenwich Bay · the Providence River · Conimicut · Prudence Island
A long estuary reaching deep into the state, shallower and warmer than the ocean outside it, so autumn arrives in here first and the bait leaves on a schedule of its own. The structure is mostly rock and bridge rather than sand.
Stripers in big numbers chasing schools of peanut bunker in the bay, while the oceanfront fishing for stripers has been generally dead.
Engine outlook
- Narragansett BayTautogBest: Sun, Oct 18, A+10 good hours65F measured on this waterbest run 10hOur read
The best stretch of that day runs 7am to 5pm, in local time at the water.
The engine has tautog here feeding hard ahead of winter.
Across the 14 days it could grade, the water is projected to fall 5 degrees. That is a forecast, not a pair of readings.
Depth to try, in typical conditions: wrecks, boulder fields, jetties and mussel beds 20-60 ft.
The bait is above it. Green crab or whitelegger on a snafu rig, dropped onto the rock. Pharyngeal teeth crush shell, so nothing about the bait is subtle.
South County and the breachways
Point Judith · the Charlestown Breachway · Weekapaug · Quonochontaug · Matunuck · Watch Hill
Open south-facing beach cut by a handful of breachways, each one draining a salt pond on the tide. Those gaps are the fishery: everything moving along the coast passes them and everything leaving a pond comes out through them, so a few hundred yards of water matters more than miles of beach.
Tautog fishing has bounced back, and should improve as water temperatures start to drop.
Engine outlook
- Point JudithTautogBest: Wed, Oct 21, A7 good hours63F measured on this waterbest run 7hOur read
The best stretch of that day runs 8am to 3pm, in local time at the water.
The engine has tautog here feeding hard ahead of winter.
Across the 14 days it could grade, the water is projected to fall 4 degrees. That is a forecast, not a pair of readings.
Depth to try, in high pressure: unchanged, because structure rather than pressure is the constraint.
The bait is above it. Green crab or whitelegger on a snafu rig, dropped onto the rock. Pharyngeal teeth crush shell, so nothing about the bait is subtle.
Who reports on this water
Rhode Island's saltwater is reported often and well, though mostly through one magazine roundup rather than by shops publishing for themselves. Not one human Rhode Island source published a water temperature this week, which is why the number in this section comes from a gauge rather than from a person. The state's freshwater has no reporter at all: Flat River Reservoir, Worden Pond and Greenwich Bay are unwatched, and that matters more than it sounds, because Rhode Island readers search for trout stocking more than for anything else.
We read: ristripedbass.blogspot.com, Dave Pickering (Dave Pickering)