Westport CT questions?

[obsessed]

Have been lucky to have been able to fish for the last 3 days. Aside from chasing ghosts(albies), with no sucess, we have not hooked any fish other than 1 nice bluefish.
My questions are these:

1. Has anyone had any luck anywhere in the westport area flyfishing? Bass, blues, albies?

2.I have noticed quite a few large commercial fishing boats in this area everyday. They seem to be dragging the bottom with giant nets. By the way, they are not oyster boats.
My question is, does anyone know what they are fishing for,(if this could be considered fishing).
Is it legal?
Could whatever they are doing have much of an impact on why the fishing has been so poor in this area, and why we havent seen much bait?

Good luck to everyone, and many thanks to those that respond.

Tim

[fmw]

Last Friday and Saturday I fished across the Sound in and around Cold Spring Harbor, with dismal results -- really the worst days ever in CSH for this time of year. The high winds of last week seemed to have had a major negative impact and much of the bait was gone. Action in the Sound was apparently either to the west (around Hempstead Harbor) and to the east (like North Fork).
Although I had thought that many of the blues would be on their way out after the storm, I was very surprised by the lack of bass. Unsually by this time, there are schools of bass under the birds all over the place. Hopefully, this action is still to come. Does anyone else have any thoughts on whether there is still action to come in Long Island Sound -- i.e., whether they are starting to see the migrating bass -- or whether it looks like the end of the fall run may flop out??

[obsessed]

thanks again to everyone who responded to my questions.
I have a quick update. My fishing partner went back out today, saw the same fast moving schools in front of Compo.The same schools we were convinced were albies.
Rather then go crazy and chase them, he fished deep(15-20 feet),and used a very slow retrieve. Net-net, 4 large blues to 15 lbs. and one 32 inch bass!

I still am very concerned about the very large trawlers off of the beaches.
They all seem to be dragging very large nets behind them. Some of the boats were very large and very coporate/professional looking operations.
They look nothing like the oyster boats we see around this area.
They have the outriggers with thick cables running off of both sides of the boat, down to what I assume are otter doors and a giant net.

If anyone has any info. on this please let me know.
Going out again tommorow, and will post the results on this board.
Good fishing to all!
Tim