SRI Newspapers — On public access and how to lose it

Kayaks filled the town beach in Wickford during the Ocean State Kayak Fishing Expo last weekend. Photos By Miles Corayer

By Todd Corayer — Narragansett Bay is teeming with stripers. It’s easy to access them from beaches, breakwalls and kayaks, from river mouths to the upper Bay and the Taunton River. Our CRMC provides a wonderful, interactive map of public access spots, which you can find at www.crmc.ri.gov/publicaccess.html.

In shallow waters, there’s topwater action with D.O.A. jerkbaits rigged with a white popper up forward. Pearl is a key color especially under cloudy skies, of which we’ve had plenty. That fast, tip jerking action with lots of splashes calls in bass quite quickly. For deeper waters, those classic Cocahoe Minnows and Zoom Flukes are always reliable. Warming waters mean quicker retrieves.

Low key GSO scientist, master brewer and good friend Dennis and family motored south from the free-for-now public access ramp at South Kingstown’s Marina Park, looking for worms hatching. With two and a half horses pushing them with and against tides, chilly waters iced their chances of landing a striper so discoveries of new coves and corners to fish again filled the day. Cold rains seem to have slowed the hatch all around, save for a one day event in Wickford. You can access that cove via a public launch area at the end of Main Street, just north of the town dock.

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