Boston Metropolitan
Region

September 21, 2007

Boston Harbor

Capt. John Mendelson at Boston FishStix Charters reports:

Fantastic late summer morning on the water in Boston today with Bill and Chris! It felt more like fall with a nice breeze out of the north and clear skies. The fish fed like crazy for the four hours we were out there and showed no signs of slowing down when we had to head for the barn. Big fish today was 38" and 20lbs, most were in the 22-26" range, all taken on the fly (except for one small bass and one bluefish, when Bill got lazy at the tail end of the trip and grabbed the sluggo rod...)

There were at least a few in CCB on Saturday... My sports hooked 6 (one on the fly) between 9am-1pm. Weather got nasty early and we bailed to Plymouth, leaving fish feeding hard. Richard was out today and only found a few pods. Seems the wind busted up the bait and the fish stayed down.

Weather looks good the next few days at least. Bass fishing the next couple days then back to tuna Thurs-Sun. This is prime time fellas. They are out there. Go get em!

Then he reports from Thursday...

Fished with Bob, his son Dan, and friend Charlie today. We pushed back late as the guys were coming down from Keene, NH and wanted to avoid the rush hour traffic. The bite never really got going today but we kept working and were rewarded with three hookups, and one fish in the boat. All on poppers--two on the black/silver yozuri and one on the Ocean Lures halfbeak. We ended up breaking off one nice fish after an hour long battle and pulled the hook on another boatside. We finally put a fish in the boat at 7:30pm in the dark that hit the popper right before sunset. Beautiful day out there and great to fish with three good guys.

Slappy reports from the Harbor:

They are pretty much everywhere, inside, outside and even way up inside. Sounds like they are up and down the coast too. If you can't catch a fish right now, you need to consider another hobbie, like crafting.

I got out at o'dark because that was as early as I could wake up. I only had about a 45 minute window on one spot for larges. Fortunately it produced in the first fifteen minutes.

Smalls were everywhere and I had a hard time finding bigger fish. Picked off a few 29" fish, but mostly the fish were 24" to 27". I stuck a very large fish in very shallow water at sunrise, but it went through some rocks and things turned out pretty ugly.

Fish were everywhere in the dark, breaking in some spots, not breaking in others, but biting everywhere. At sunrise I chased birds outside and found it hard to keep up in the yak. I ended up stopping and casting where the birds were and found quite a few fish.

Plymouth & the South Shore

Capt. Dave at Baymen Outfitters has a great report up on his site of large numbers of bass on the flats in Duxbury Bay.  Check it out here... 

Rhumbline had this from the Southwest Corner of Stellwagen:

Great day for a boat ride!

Fished the 2nd half of the day.

Left Boston around 12:30 PM and headed down to SWC, fishing ledge, peaked hill down to golf ball.

Spotty pods here and there, nothing ever really formed up.

Had 3-4 good shots, but not a swing - fished seemed to be just rolling on the surface and not realy feeding.

I thought the tide change around 6PM would light up the place - but could not find them.

Sounds like more of a morning bite today.

Good luck out there on Friday

Cheers.

The North Shore

FlyFishFrostie reports:

I've been out cruising the Rockport beaches down through all of Gloucester, Magnolia, Manchester, and Beverly a couple of early mornings and evenings for the past few weeks. I've somehow missed the great action reported by others from the beach shorefronts (I think those success stories happened further north) but have had some modest luck with schoolies 16"-21", with only three caught last night from shore on fly in Beverly.

The good news is there are some concentrations of peanut bunker around with the bass on them, but the blitzes seem to be staying mostly beyond flycasting distance from shore, perhaps because of the wind direction. Last week were some huge blitzes in the middle of Gloucester Harbor that I couldn't quite reach with my 300-yard left-handed double haul. But, just because there are no birds or bait working a particular area, it's still worth it to get down to the water and blind cast when all else fails because the fish are not yet in full migration mode and are still hanging around rocks, etc. close to shore without showing themselves.

Dfish reports:

I have had good sucess this week between the breakwater down to Manchester including two fish over 40" on Monday evening, and five more keepers tonight ... the largest being 27lbs. Most fish coming on spin but a few on the fly, all from a boat. I would be happy to share intel if you want. Let me know when you are coming down and I can fill you in before you get here on where I am finding fish. Hopefully this keeps up!

Cliffisher reports:

THE FISHING IN IPSWICH BAY FROM PI TO HALIBUT PT IS ON FIRE - THE LAST 4 - 5 DAYS INCLUDING THIS AM HAVE BEEN UNREAL GET OUT THERE NOW, I AM TALKING ACRES OF BLUEFISH AND KEEPER BASS AT FIRST LIGHT and AGAIN AT AT AFTERNOON TILL DUSK

BigBoatDog reports from Plum Island Sound:

Fished the sound this evening with my friend Jim. The feed I had seen from shore the last couple of days did not really materialize plus it was a bit rougher than I would like. There were however schoolies to be had if you watched for the birds dropping down for the bait, small peanut bunker. Fishing got better as it got darker but now there were no birds to let you know where they were. finally headed in adn made one more stop near a popular beach that yielded several more schoolies on the fly rod.
Mark

The Merrimack River

Ted Purcell had this from the Merrimack:

Finally NOAA blows it in our favor. There was no NW blow this AM. No evidence of fall run yet either. A few birds south of the mouth, grabbed one 20 inch bass there. Bait in the water, but not balled up. Ran to the mouth of the Essex no birds or signs of fish on top. Trolled one 25" bass on a tube and worm near Middle Ground. Never used one before, pertty cool rig. My neighbor managed two blues on a plug near the mouth of the Rowley River. No busting blues though which we usually find in PI Sound this time of year. Nothing on my fly rod. Gorgeous day on the water. Hope the fish up north stop to eat in the next week or two.
TedP

BigK reports:

My son and myself did the same exact thing. We did end 11 to11 in the competition but we picked all but 2 fish off of structure. The other 2 were in a quick feed at the end of the jetties where the river meets the open ocean.

All small but 22 fish over 7 hours of fishing in the fall. Last year we were into a hundred over that time period.

Cheers,

Keep up the faith.

GRH follows up:

Move a little futher South! Cape Ann to Boston Harbor has been a consistant surface feed, great for light gear or fly. Get out before dark and the big girls are looking to fatten up.