“Wow, that’s the first fluke I’ve seen in ages.”

Togging Tommy was admiring the bright white flatfish flapping on the cedar planks of Eddie Tavares’ 18-foot skiff. That handsome cedar on oak skiff I had assisted sanding and soaping screws on during her construction.

We made the long trip to Sakonnet that morning, before the hot sun of the inner city took hold and fried us on that open boat. Temperatures were always much cooler at Sakonnet, occasionally as much as 10 degrees, with a refreshing, light, southwest breeze.

After catching two large scup, Henry the baker felt a hard bite and more resistance than the few scup he had in his bucket had provided. That was the exciting part of fishing at Sakonnet.

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That morning we had a load of big scup, a few black sea bass, a tautog and a load of choggies.

Now, choggies are considered pests and bait thieves, but one of the men’s aunts claimed they were the best-tasing fish in the ocean and if her choggie chowder was any evidence of that, the people lucky enough to have consumed a cup of it were in complete agreement, me included.

On occasion we might catch a winter flounder, a few white perch, and, early in the season, a couple of cod fish, which didn’t have any size and bag limits on them.

Of all those species, the cod was the most prized and on a good day almost everyone aboard the overcrowded boat brought a fillet or two back home to their kitchens.

Although most bottom fish were plentiful, my mentors were insistent on chumming to bring the fish in close under the boat, where they could find our baited hooks.

This worked well but it had its drawbacks. On occasion, it brought in all the smaller fish as well and our hooks were stripped of bait by these hungry hoards.

One morning while fishing inside of Sachuest Point alongside Sheep Penn Rock, in Middletown, we were chumming and catching all of the aforementioned species when I had a ferocious strike that almost ripped the handline from my grip.

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I reared back and a blue thrashing rocket broke the surface alongside the boat and that got everyone’s attention.

Paulie, a fish hog if there ever was one, was alongside and grabbed the line from my hand and began fighting MY FISH.

Tommy screamed at him to return the line to me, but on the next jump that bluefish shook its head, and those razor sharp teeth severed the three-strand marline line.

Back during that era you could buy a hank of marline (often referred to as tarred line because of its scent and color) in 27-pound test with a hook and sinker attached for 29 cents or less from Benny's or Potvin’s hardware at the top of Brightman street at the approach of the Brightman street bridge.

Tommy forcefully took Paulie’s line from him and handed it to me with a warning.

“You better not touch the kid's line again.”

I was very uncomfortable fishing with the fish hog's line, but Tommy came up alongside and fished between me and the culprit for the rest of that trip.

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Back at the dock, as we were unloading, Tommy warned Paulie that he would not want to be in his shoes after he told the caretaker what he did. I did not witness the punishment, but after that Paulie avoided me like the plague.

Today, a fisherman using bait can expect to catch all the scup he needs or wants, but the legal black sea bass of 16 inches are difficult to find.

About 15 years ago, we began to catch grey ocean Trigger fish, a once distant southern species, in our daily bags. They habituated the same bottom as scup, tog and sea bass and are an unusual looking fish.

At first I began to discard them and was especially careful not to make contact with the large, sharp spine/spear they wear at the top of their dorsal fin. This is usually extended to prevent them from being swallowed by larger fish and to hold them firmly in crevasses in the rocks and reefs they prefer.

The smaller members of the triggerfish are actually quite delicious once you get your fillet knife through their armor-like scales to begin the filleting process. Some people say they make the best sushi and ceviche, as they are delicious raw and with the various sauces. We find them very tasty and prepare them by baking, frying, or grilling them outside on a fish rack on our grill.

In fact, we have a special place off Sakonnet Point where we drop the racks of filleted bluefish to act as chum then return there in a few hours and usually catch a few triggerfish for the table.

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Over the past decades, I have seen some odd catches in the Sakonnet fish traps, particularly the sets off the Newport shoreline at Lands End.

When Tony Parascandola was running their family trap business, I saw white marlin, giant tuna, cobia, huge tide runner weakfish, sharks of all species, dolphin, huge sting rays, a small swordfish, and several Florida species that made it this far up the coast from their normal habitat.

This year (fingers crossed), I have seen more and larger bluefish in many of the rips and deep water reefs I usually fish, from Jamestown to Westport Harbor. A few of these were really big gator-sized blues that acted more like topwater Mahi when they are hooked.

Mike Woltman hooked into one of these denizens fishing aboard my boat on the Fourth of July, and it was a fish that spent most of that battle in the air, jumping and shaking its massive head like it was something personal.

That fish was bled and put into an ice slurry and was as fresh as the moment it was caught when I got it to the cutting board. Those two fillets went to friends who prefer bluefish to stripers. Yes, there are a few people who have developed a taste for this much-maligned species and the reason some folks have disliked it is that they did not eat fish that was properly cared for.

In our northeastern environment, there is nothing quite like taking a bluefish on a topwater plug and this month into the end of August I’m looking forward to introducing a few striper purists to the topwater antics of high flying bluefish. Standing by!

Charley Soares writes regular columns on fishing and the outdoors for The Herald News in Fall River, Mass.