Here in Connecticut we have six months of good fishing. The "diehards" can extend it to seven by hitting the coves for schoolies in April and dodging the wind gusts in November for blues, bass and albies.

We are now in the first week of August and are at the half way point. As a whole the first half was good. Numerous keeper size fish were caught in the river. The biggest I know of was a 51 pounder. Quite honestly I didn't realize fish that big cruised the Connecticut River flats. The numerous rainy overcast days really helped the fishing. The bass stayed in the river longer than normal This "miserable" weather also resulted in more highly productive bass days than in past years.

The squid run at Watch Hill produced some excellent fishing. About four waves of migratory fish came through. Migratory bass are easily identified by the numerous sea lice clinging to the fish. If your timing was right you could have an "epic" day. Using a squid fly on a 9/10 weight rod we were catching 10-20 pound bass on every drift - sometimes having double hook ups on a single drift.

July has been a good month. This is typically when we transition into summer fishing - catching more blues than bass. The last few weeks have produced some good blues fishing. Both on the rips and around the rocks. There's no guarantee we will always be at "the right place at the right time" but our "batting averages" would put us into the baseball hall of fame.

Bass are at times being caught in the rips. They don't seem to stay in any one place for more than a couple days so there is a lot of lucky timing. A friend landed a 41" bass last week using a sand eel fly. Most bass being caught now are 24-27".

Things look good for the second half. There is lots of bait, particularly small "silver sides" and butterfish.

Stay tuned. I'll keep you posted on what happens the second half!