BARRINGTON - The water at Barrington Town Beach, a flat expanse of pale blue, barely broke onto the shore, while pick-up trucks, SUVs and mini-vans filed into the parking lot. Drivers sipped coffee from behind their steering wheels, peering out across the upper half of an early-morning Narragansett Bay. The search for the first boil of the day had begun.

Boils mean bluefish — lots of them — striking relentlessly into schools of baitfish near the surface. The blues will sometimes jump clear from the water in their pursuit of fresh, young meat. The gulls and turns cap the display by hovering a few feet above the water, occasionally dipping down to scoop up half-eaten baitfish, bits remaining from the feeding frenzy.

Barrington's Ian McGarty, 13, caught four bluefish last Wednesday, using his lucky plug which he bought on Prudence Island.

It's that boiling that draws people to Barrington Town Beach — a veritable hotbed for bluefishing in Narragansett Bay. And this year's fishing, as Tiverton resident Ernie Rapoza will attest, has been some of the best ever.

"It's been good this year," he said. "Really good. I love the blues. They're great fighters, they don't quit."

For the last three years, Mr. Rapoza has spent his spring, summer and early fall mornings in an ongoing journey to chase the blues. He wakes early, travels to Seapowet and Fogland in Tiverton, then to Island Park in Portsmouth, over to Colt State Park in Bristol and finally ends up in Barrington. It's a daily trek to track the fighting fish, and the ultimate destination seems to be the best spot around.

Mr. Rapoza, like many of the other men who fish Barrington beach, believe that the shape of the land has much to do with the bluefishing. The beach acts almost as a cup, where blues can corner the baitfish and take their time devouring them. The boils in Barrington are easily some of the best and most consistent around.

"We're fortunate to get a big school of bait in here," he said. "They'll bang them up against the shores. They had them in the corner a couple days ago. I ran down there and got three out of the school before they went down."

On Thursday morning, however, the water was still.

The only boils on the bay were popping up almost a mile away near the Warwick coast. The distance between Barrington Beach and Warwick Neck didn't bother most of the men gathered, instead it acted as a tease to draw more of them out of their cars to peer through binoculars.

By eight o'clock, the crowd of fishermen had grown, keeping pace with the anticipation that one of the schools in the middle of the bay would eventually work its way toward the beach. Fishermen lined the parking lot — resting on bumpers and hoods, drinking the last swills from their coffee cups, talking about the night before.

Day to remember

It was just 12 hours earlier when the bluefish charged into the waters off Barrington Beach, pounding the menhaden time and again.

Carl North, a Riverside resident, was there for most of the day. He said the action was so good that the baitfish were at times actually beaching themselves — committing suicide in order to escape the ravenous blues.

"Yesterday afternoon, starting down there at the RISD (Rhode Island School of Design Tillinghast Estate) property, from there all the way past this boat, you could see the splashes in the water, not fifteen feet from the water line," Mr. North said. "Last year was terrible here. I saw one fish caught, and I showed up in the morning and in the afternoon every day. This year has been almost as good as the year before last. Yesterday was a reminder of that, except the fish were bigger."

Mr. North and his two fishing partners were in a boat for the first part of the day, cruising the length of the beach following the schools. At 9 a.m., Mr. North's boat returned to its mooring in the Warren River. The Riverside resident got in his car and drove back to the beach. He stayed for a while, then left to run some errands. By 3 p.m. he had returned, and so had the bluefish.

"There's nothing like yesterday," he said. "It was crazy."

He said that 30 or 40 fishermen worked up and down the shore, pulling in blues between nine and 11 pounds. By 8 p.m., the boils had disappeared.

Word travels

The crowd Thursday afternoon must have heard about the day prior. By 5 p.m., cars and trucks filled every parking spot at the beach. Fishing poles rested on the railing while their owners stood nearby, waiting for the bluefish to return.

Across the water, near the north tip of Prudence Island and toward the Warwick coast the bluefish were feeding. Through binoculars flocks of birds could be seen crowding the surface of four large boils at the same time. Fishermen in boats sped from one frenzy to the next, casting into the schools and reeling back their catch.

At the beach, the fishermen talked and pointed.

The crowd eventually shrunk.

For men like Mr. Rapoza, that disappointment is part of the chase, it's what keeps him coming back to the beach, waiting for another big day where the fish swarm and the lines tighten.

"It's going to get much better," Mr. Rapoza said about the fishing season. "They have a hell of a fall run here. We're hoping for two more months of good fishing."

Feeding time

There's a reason why bluefish make the water boil. It's called menhaden, and it's the main baitfish for the blues, said Save the Bay BayKeeper John Torgan.

"Menhaden is a marine fish, they spawn in the ocean. Their juveniles come into Narragansett Bay. That's what's causing the explosion of bluefish," he said.

The young menhaden used to frequent Narragansett Bay as seven- to eight-inch adults, in big schools. Those fish became targets for commercial fishermen and recreational anglers as well, but the adult schools eventually disappeared from the bay. Many recreational fishermen complained that the commercial companies — which used menhaden for fish oil, chicken feed and in other products — wiped out the adult population.

Now, local waters are host to huge schools of the young Menhaden.

"What we've seen is a shift in a population," Mr. Torgan said. "We're seeing huge numbers of juveniles now. The juveniles are not commercially harvested."

As long as the baitfish swim local waters, so to will the blues. Most fishermen believe that the fishing will remain good through October.

"Menhaden, along with other forage fish, like silver-sides and anchovies, are bait. Anyone's bait if they're out there," said Torgan.

By Josh Bickford

jbickford@eastbaynewspapers.com