The 3rd traditional non-competitive meet of the New England Freedivelist members took place at various Rhode Island locations on September 26th, 1998. We first met at the Beavertail State Park (http://www.riparks.com) in Jamestown, and then also tried 2 Narraganset locations, 530 Ocean Drive and Black Point Fishing Area. Overall, the conditions were very nice but there were no big stripers to be seen, although false albacore and scup catches made up for it.

Tom and I shore dove the Naragansett side of Beavertail first and got our limit of tautogs. I got 2 pollocks on the wreck at the tip. I do not remember seeing any legal bass. The 530 Ocean Drive dive was perfect though. We saw some nice big togzillas but did not shot any because we had our limits in Beavertail. We did not see any bass, false albacore, bonitos or scups but Roger, Olivier and Ioannis got all these guys 100 meters away from us, at Black Point Fishing Area. Go figure!. The visibility was perfect though, one of the best in RI. It was probably around 15 meters. Ralph, Tom and I enjoyed those big boulders on sand straight out from 530, populated by big togzillas. Overall it was a great dive....

Since I do not have a detailed report written from that meet, that's all I can write from what I remember and what I could get from old e-mails. Please let me know if you have anything to add.

Conditions:

Sunny, calm seas, very good visibility, especially in Narragansett locations.

Participants (in alphabetical order):

Ata Bilgili
Tom Campbell
Toni Cianci
Ralph Cohn
Steve Conroy
John Coreira
Mark Dixon
Dave Drew
Jose L. Fernandez
Tom Jerussi
Mike Jette
Chris McFaden
Frank Oterelo
Rene Potvin
Constantino Rago
Olivier Resca
Ioannis Sapountzis
Roger Yazbeck

Fish Taken:

- Probably a lot of tautogs, some stripers, false albacore, bonito, scups and maybe flatfish.

Other Stories from the Meet:

- From Constantino Rago
- From Jose L. Fernandez

Pictures

The following are from Ioannis Sapountzis and Tom Campbell. Let me know if you have any.

Tom Campbell and Ata Bilgili displaying their tautog catch (jpeg, 71.8k)
 

Tom Campbell and Ata Bilgili displaying their catch (jpeg, 74.7k)
 

Tom Campbell and Ioannis Sapountzis displaying their tautog catch (jpeg, 85.8k)
 

Tom Campbell and Ioannis Sapountzis displaying their catch (jpeg, 78.8k)
 

Ioannis Sapountzis displaying his Beavertail tautog catch (jpeg, 65.4k)
 

Ioannis Sapountzis with his %30 Ocean Drive striper (jpeg, 58,6k)
 
 
 

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