New Haven Harbor, Guilford & Stratford
Capt. Pat Juliano
July 15, 2007
New Haven - Saltwater Fishing Report
Rescue 21 Testing
I was recently chartered by a company CACI who works with General Dynamics and most of the government agency’s . We were out to test and calibrate the new Rescue 21 system. The system is to located boaters in harms way thru a VHF transmission. There are 4 towers on the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound. The first tower to be tested was the Stamford tower.
We met at my dock in New Haven at 6 am . We went over the game plan and checked the charts so I knew where I had to position the boat. I took on 1 passenger and a couple of pieces of testing equipment. We then made the run down to Port Chester New York to are first test site. Another rep drove down to the tower site to receive our transmission. It was about a 2 hour ride in 3-4 footed.
Upon arriving in New York we set up the equipment and after a few brief radio conversations testing started. What I had to do is work my way back to Stratford Ct stopping at 25 different locations. I had to keep the boat as still as possible as there machine put out a VHF transmission. It lasted about 3-5 minutes. Keeping the boat still in 3-4 footers was no easy task. After the transmission testing was complete we would radio our GPS location and moved to the next site. It was great to see that is was able to locate us within a couple of feet. This system was so accurate that they knew when the boat was rocking in the water.
The system is accurate to 20 miles away but they told me that they have been able to locate vessels out to 40 miles in the open waters. It is great to see that a stranded boater will be able to be located within a few feet just from a VHF radio transmission.
It was a great experience for me and I’m looking forward to testing the next 3 towers.
Fishing Report
Now to the fishing report. I was able to get out with my wife Christi on Thursday. We left the dock about 5:30 pm and ran east to a reef that I was told was holding good size Bass. We had about 25 live bunker with us. It took me a few drifts to located the fish and once we did, the action was pretty hot.
We had an incoming tide and a light southeast wind. We pretty much had action on every drift. The fish ranged from 38- to 46 inches . All were released except for one that I could not revive.
We only had 1 bluefish bite off for the trip. It was great to get out with Christi and catch some very good quality fish.
We ran back to the dock about 8:30 and called it a night.
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