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August 27th, 2004

The Right Place, The Right Time

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I had one of those moments of clarity the other day. Fishing bonito on the South Side of the Cape with RT Forum Moderator & Northern New England Fishwire Coordinator Bob Parsons, I realized that much of our luck is simply being in the right place at the right time.

To start the story from the beginning, we'd been cruising around the likely spots in the morning Sunday, Lackey's Cove, Waquoit, etc. without much sign of anything. So we swung into Woods Hole, as the funny fish had been holding in there fairly well, and it would be out of the wind. Not much happening there, so we broke out the Screaming Yellow Zonkers and sandwiches (the Zonkers, a honey colored popcorn have always been considered a good luck charm by my family) and ate lunch. As I finished my sandwich, a pod of bonito started blitzing right beside the boat. I stood up, and frankly I can't remember if I tossed the fly over the side by hand or if I just placed it on the surface with the tip of the rod, then began striping line off the reel to get ready to cast...but whatever, I was hooked up immediately. Never mind all the "graceful 60' cast", I literally had just tossed the fly on the surface beside the boat, and didn't even strip.

As usual, the fish was then all over the place at high speed, while I tried to clear the line. Luckily I remembered Dean Clark's suggestion from one of his CCA lectures that you tuck the butt of the rod into your elbow and turn the reel with the handle facing down to keep it from fouling as the line streams out.

Unfortunately, I grabbed for the reel handle at just the same moment the fish decided to start another run. My knuckle got smashed and the fish popped free. Oh well, better luck next time.

The point of this little story is this: While we may agonize over the little things in our presentation, fly selection, etc., we ought to remember that there's no exact check list. Sometimes just being there is enough...

Let's discuss the nature of "luck" in this weeks discussion thread (find it here).

Don't forget to send me your own reports, and until next week...

Tight Lines!

Mark Cahill

Boston Harbor

Slappy offered up this report:

8/25 Haba--Dog days are howling/Dusted off the flyrod

Launched the yak just after high last night. I haven't been out for a couple weeks because of vacation, but hopes were high because the bite had been so good earlier this month. There were a lot of boats when I was paddling out, but they all left before I got out. I guess they didn't want to fish in the dark!?

The bite started off as a pick but after a couple hours of dark, it got going. Not wide open, but a fish every couple casts, more than half the fish were legal. There was some bait around and the stripers were doing the occasional boil--just one splash here and there. Fish were in very shallow, most came in 3' to 6' and I was even getting them where the water wasn't really moving. It feels like september already.

Since it was dark and there was nobody around I broke out the fly rod and managed to get a cast past the end of the yak (ok, it took a few tries). This was my first time in the salt with the fly rod for stripers (the influence of you reel-timers). I got my first fly-rod legal; I have caught many legals on the fly, but never using a fly rod.

I'm reminded of Willam Defoe's line from Platoon: "The worm has turned for you, my friend."

Sandy reports blues and bass in Hingham Bay - I may be headed there tomorrow to get my girls into their first blues...

Hingham Bay- 8/25

We had some good luck on Sunday early around the boulders of Peddocks so we headed back there this morning. Same deal, lots of fish in the mid-twenties but nothing too big. Things shut off at 8 so we decided to head back to Hingham Harbor. While cruising through Hingham Bay we saw a huge migration of both terns and cormorants. We followed them with the binoculars and saw about a hundred cormorants swimming close to shore with birds diving all around them. Where there are cormorants there is bait, and where they is bait there are fish so we headed over. Sure enough we found a large school of good-sized blues breaking alll over the place with some smaller bass mixed in. They were puking up mass amounts of silversides when you got them to the boat. After about 45 minutes the blues vanished but the bait stuck around and bass started coming up everywhere. Most were in the mid to high twenties with some much larger ones visible in the shallow water following in the fly and chasing hooked fish. My buddy who is relatively new to fly fishing got his biggest yet on the fly at 27". The bait now appeared to be a lot bigger and some of the bass had what I think were juvie herring (about 4-5" long) in their mouths. They stuck around for a while despite the departing tide but the big ones disappeard. We had to head in but all in all, a great morning on the water, especially for August.

South Shore

The word is out that there are tons of blues in the Canal, so expect to find them all along the south coast as well. Plymouth Bay is shaking off the doldrums and coming alive again. No word from the North River...

ScottNE reports:

8/25 Tuna and Bass

Saw more tuna today than I ever have in CCB. Heard of a few hundred plus pounders being caught, saw two different boats take fish over 150 pounds not far from Barnstable. Saw the largest tuna I care to see that close, had my dad with me today who's never seen anything that big, nevermind it pushing through the water at us. School of decent sized fish were bouncing around at the turn, maybe to 150-200 pounds and in the middle pops a mini-submarine pushing a wake like one too. Slight jump and splash and it was gone but what a site. Just like a few weeks ago every single time they came tear as*ing through the bass bite would die as they took refuge. All toll we probably saw the tuna working 10 or more times. Sounded like some guys had real good days too on them.

Bass are really schooled up. The gig is up I think on spot fish and from here on out I bet we see mainly schools of bass working and if you don't find the schools stinkarama. Bass trailed the blues all day, find the blues, find the bass underneath. Guys on the radio were noting nothing but blues. My father and I were tossing gag's grabbers with the silver bottom at the blues and would watch in amazement as 40+ inch bass would try to attack the blues with the plug. They were never quite fast enough to get the grabber so we had to switch to a wooden floater.

Basically the bass worked under the blues most of the day, the only way to get on them was a heavy jig dropped right on them. Nothing else worked as you'd get a blue first as they were always out in front of the schools. Buddies managed three bass trolling but maybe 40 blues in the process. Largest fish of the day was somewhere in the low 30 pound range. Blues were enormous in weight as they were just pigging out.

Surface action never stopped until after we were ready to leave around 3ish. Took the scenic route on an increasing E wind. Still very little showing north of the canal as the imature pogies bugged out.

Saw for the first time in my life a school of fully grown pogies today. One problem was these fish were working silversides in the sandwich boat basin at 6am Nice site though.

Lots of sea turtles bouncing around north of Elsville. Some very fat seals also mixed in scaring off the bass. Did see one flat on his back eating a bass of probably 20 pounds...did not see the school of bass again!

Water was FAC, used a lot of top water stuff from Gibbs and Gag's. Few Rapala's here and there and plastics but the plastics were a horror show of stubs.

North Shore

Okay, some say we should be renaming this the "Not" Shore right now.  Still, there are some decent catches, and there are always bluefish offshore.  I had reports from monday of pinstripe emblazoned fish in amongst the swimmers at Crane's...

The Merrimack River

 Capt. Charlie Crue from Channel Edge Charters has apparently been spending a little time on the house too...