o s a r c dux - Sea Duck Hunting

     Coastal New England offers the unique opportunity to hunt sea ducks. Their name is literal as these birds spend the majority of their lives on the ocean. Rhode Island is the winter home to five common species of sea ducks: common eider, oldsquaw, black scoter, white-wing scoter, and surf scoter.  Equipped with large bills for crushing mollusks and crabs, and large webbed feet positioned far back on their body for diving deep to get them, these birds certainly look different than the average duck. They can often be seen near shore in large flocks or rafts along rocky stretches where food is readily available.
     

Surf Scoter

Common Eider

White-wing scoter

Oldsquaw 

Harlequin ducks are a species commonly seen off the coast of Rhode Island, They cannot be hunted on the east coast due to low population numbers.

      Hunting these birds is a different ball game and a far cry from chasing wood ducks and teal in beaver ponds. Dealing with the ocean's currents, waves, and sometimes bad attitude makes sea duck hunting a different kind of challenge.  The most common way to hunt them is setting a boat near shore or in open water where the birds usually feed, then setting several lines of decoys to lure the birds in close. They generally decoy readily and offer exciting wing-shooting. Because of this there has been a boom in the popularity of this type of hunting in the past several years. Our crew doesn't hunt them very often anymore, but we go a few times each season. 

An early morning flock of black scoters.

The traditional way of hunting sea ducks involves setting long strings of decoys parallel to each other to resemble a raft of birds feeding.

Common Eiders approaching the decoys. 

October - Early Ducks

     October is my favorite month of the year.  Autumn is in full swing. The leaves are turning and the air is cooling off.  Fall fishing remains good, deer season continues, and best of all duck season begins.  While I enjoy all of the outdoor activities I write about, duck hunting is by far my favorite.  From now until January my life will pretty much revolve around it.  Fortunately I have met a great group of friends who think the same way and share the passion I do.  We have worked the rest of the year til this point so that we can spend as much time chasing ducks as possible.  From the outside looking in, I'm sure our obsession with hunting ducks seems odd and unhealthy, but to us there's no other way. I can't say there is anything I would trade for the lack if sleep, the bitter cold mornings, the stress, and the amount of money spent that will all happen in the coming months, and all of this for a few ducks!
      Early duck season begins each year in early or mid-October.  It stays open for a short time (four days in RI and 10 in CT) before closing again and re-opening in November.  The first duck season usually consists of hunting in rivers, swamps, and beaver ponds for wood ducks, teal, and mallards. This short season is the best time to take wood ducks as they are among the first birds to migrate south for the winter, by November the majority will be gone.  The male wood duck is a strikingly beautiful bird, and although they are abundant, most people never get to see one in the wild. Their call is a loud screeching whistle which is hard to mistake. It fills the air most mornings during the October season. The window for these birds is brief so we take advantage when we can.  As far as table fare goes, wood ducks are about the best tasting duck there is. (it's a close tie with teal)
      Our early season was slow (keeping the trend), but as always it's good to get out with friends and take a few birds.

A pair of wood ducks: The drake (male) is one of the best looking birds around in my opinion.

sunrise - RI - opening day 2011

Bluewing and Greenwing teal are both common early season species as well.  Like wood ducks most will migrate by the time November rolls around.

Hunting a beaver pond set back in the woods.

Overdue - September- Geese, Deer, and Fish

     Apparently I haven't updated this since late August! Lack of motivation I guess, but this is going to be a slow week for me work wise and duck season just ended yesterday, so I figure I can at least write about and recap another season. Overall it was slow. We had trouble finding good numbers of ducks, when we did things often didn't work out as planned. There were certainly high points along the way though, and it was still one to remember.

September 

Early Goose
     September brings us the first waterfowl season of the year. Early canada goose hunting.  Canada geese can be broken down into two very basic categories: migrants and residents. Residents are the birds that breed here and stay all year long. These are often the birds you see in parks, golf courses, and on lawns during the summer months.  The migrant population are generally birds breeding in Canada which begin to migrate south at the beginning of fall.  The goal of most wildlife agencies is to reduce the number of resident geese which are often seen as a nuisance, all the while maintaining a healthy migrant goose population. Since the majority of migrant geese don't begin arriving until October, very liberal bag limits are allowed during all of September. 
      Like many other hunters in the area we take advantage of this season. It's a great way to shake the dust off the gear and get back into the groove for the next five months of waterfowl hunting. The trick to this season (for us) is hoping the geese are using areas we can hunt (mainly farm fields).  The problem, was that the birds mostly weren't using the farms we were able to hunt.  We went out a few times and had a couple decent hunts, but it set the pace for the rest of the waterfowl season. Slow!

A pair of Canada geese on the approach.

A goose with a leg band taken during the Sept. goose season.

Deer
     Along with goose hunting, the season for white-tail deer also begins in September.  Archery hunting begins in the middle of the month and is a great way to get out hunting while the weather is still warm.  I have only become a "deer hunter" in the past few years. Although I had gone for many before, I never cared for it much. I now look forward to sitting in a tree with a bow and arrow (or gun depending on the season) and waiting for a deer to walk by.  I also enjoy filling my freezer with delicious venison! I hunted several times in September for deer and was able to get things started with a nice doe.

 Venison: butchered and ready to wrap and freeze.

Fish
      September is a great month for fishing as well as hunting. The days are still hot, but the nights are generally a little cooler.  Freshwater fishing picks back up after being slow during the heat of the summer. Saltwater fishing follows this trend as well.  Many saltwater game-fish begin their migration south and feed heavily along the way.  For the months of fall, saltwater fishing can be extraordinary as seemingly endless amounts of striped bass and bluefish inhabit the coastal waters of Rhode Island and Connecticut. Inshore appearances by pelagic species also become more common and the brief arrival of small tuna species such as atlantic bonito and false albacore begins.  These fish are all hungry on their migration leading to some of the best inshore fishing of the year. As with most falls, my mind generally switches to hunting mode and I don't fish as much as I would like to or should.  I did however make it out several times and caught a few along the way.

A false albacore taken off the coast of Rhode Island on a cool September morning. These fish offer great light tackle fishing for a brief window each fall.

Look Closely

My friend Chris and I fished a few days ago in the waters off of southern Rhode Island.  We hadn't fished together in a while so it would be a fun trip no matter what the results.  Morning light was just peaking over the horizon as we steamed east towards a couple local reefs that hold fish all summer, an area where we have had some fantastic mornings catching striped bass on fly rods.

As soon as we arrived at our usual first spot to look around, several small bluefish showed themselves along a ripline. We decided to have a little fun and stretch our lines on a few of them. We rigged up shock tippets with old flies and hooked fish on just about every cast for maybe 20 minutes before we decided to check for some stripers at a few other regular haunts.

Bluefish Double

Bluefish littered the surface everywhere we looked.  They can often plague a striper fishing trip, out-competing bass and destroying flies, but on this day they proved a necessary ally to our success with linesides.  When we finally found the bass we were looking for, the seemingly endless bluefish schools in the area drew most of the other boats to them, leaving the bass all to us!

The schools of blues were more obvious than the bass.  They ravaged baitfish at the surface while flocks of terns and gulls bombed from above. The striper feed was much more subtle, they glided slowly across the surface exposing their dorsal fins and the tops of their tails. They were holding tight to one corner of the reef, on most drifts you only had a couple shots at the fish and then it was over. The birds, being occupied with the bluefish leftovers, didn't bother to follow the stripers so you really had to look for them. 

Myself and Chris with a couple of the average fish from the morning.

The stripers we caught averaged 28-30 inches in length, a great size fish for a fly rod. Only a couple were under the legal size of 28 inches. As a bonus I landed the lunker of the day, a 36 inch fish, weighing somewhere in the mid to high teens (my biggest striper on fly to date!) The bite was finicky at best  and the preferred flies were small and flashy to match the peanut bunker they were feasting on.

The 36" bass took me well into the backing of my 10 weight set-up

It was a fun morning as always with one of my oldest fishing buddies, Can't wait to do it again!

Tuna Tales

Had the opportunity to join a few friends on a "light tackle" tuna trip off the coast of cape cod this morning.  We left the dock around 4:45am and were soon greeted by a stunning sunrise.

We made it to the fishing grounds soon after and were immediately surrounded by breaching humpback whales.  The still mornings silence was interrupted by spouting blow holes and tail slaps from all around us.  We marked tuna on the sonar and started making casts with large spinning gear rigged with near-surface plugs.  We had several tuna follow our baits, but no takers right away.  

The number of whales in the area was nothing short of incredible, at any point throughout the morning we had one or several pods in eyesight.  Some as close as 50 feet from the boat.

Finally we got a tuna to play ball! Capt. Dom hooked it on a jig below the boat and the battle began.  He passed the rod to George who dealt with several blistering runs and got the fish below the boat before he threw in the towel and handed the rod off to Tom.  They say these fish will test your tackle, One run under the boat by the fish while the rod was at just too high of an angle and it exploded, as if landing a 100+lb fish wasn't hard enough!

Tom's arms couldn't handle it anymore and he passed the rod to Jim, who brought the fish home, short rod and all!

The bluefin tuna was just legal size to keep, Tuna between 60" and I believe 72" need to be released, Ours was just under the 60" mark and Capt. Dom estimated it to weigh around 130-150 lbs. A truly impressive creature (and a delicious one at that) Tuna sashimi on the gunwale of the boat during a lull in the action. Soy sauce and wasabi are kept aboard for such reasons.

In addition to the tuna we caught and released several striped bass in the 20-40lb range. All caught incidentally on the same plugs we fished for tuna.  According to regulations the bass can't be kept farther than 3 miles from shore and aren't to be removed from the water more so than necessary to safely remove the hooks.  Tom and Capt. Dom unhooking a bass in that weight range.

With good reason, several whale watch boats out of cape cod were using the same area.  Here are some customers getting what they paid for!

It was a great day on the water.  Lots of great sights and a cooler full of tuna! Thanks Capt. Dom, Jim, George and Tom for making it a fun day on the water!


The End

Slacking!

It's true. I have been slacking in the writing blogs department, although I do have plenty to write about.  I have fished 19 times since my last post just under a month ago in both fresh and saltwater.  Here's a few highlights and photos.

May 1st - 7th I fly fished RI's south shore salt ponds every day in the well known cinder worm hatches.  I found lots of worms from the beginning which seemed to diminish by the 4th or 5th.   There were fish to be found every day, but the number and size increased substantially between the beginning of the week and just a few days in.  By the end of the week it seemed like it was all over and the fish had left town.

 A cinder worm. Candy to a striped bass.

The surface of the water littered with cinder worms and few swirling stripers.

A nice fly caught schoolie, unhooked and free to leave

My brother doing battle with his first RI striper of the year

A squid, foul hooked, but calamari none the less

I fished a couple times for the following week, picking off a few stripers here and there at various coastal spots.  On the weekend of 5/13-5/15 I fished freshwater all weekend with my brother in CT.  We did well on both smallmouth and largemouth bass and while my brother schooled me (pun intended!) on numbers of smallies, I took the cake with a slammer largemouth on my third cast Friday evening.  Since I rarely fish freshwater it was nice to take such a big bass. I have only landed one largemouth larger in my life and it was when I fished freshwater on a near daily basis. 

Broke out the 5 wt on Saturday off the dock. Mega smallmouth. 

A little later that day from my kayak with the same 5 weight.  My biggest fly rod largemouth to date.

Last week was a wet one, windy too! The rain didn't want to let up making fishing possible yet uncomfortable....  I stayed in most days.  I did get out a few times, for a couple scattered stripers on fly.  Hoping this next week proves fishy, I have a new 7wt to try out on schoolies, custom built by my friend John.