"Although the cold, overcast, rainy and basically miserable weather has dampened our spirits a bit, the fishing throughout the Buzzards Bay waters remains good. Those hardy enough to put up with the elements are being rewarded with good action. New schools of stripers and bluefish continue to pass through our waters each day. Many of these fish will work the bait hard as they move through the Cape Cod Canal and on to the colder waters of Cape Cod Bay. How long these fish will pause in our waters before moving on will depend mainly upon the availability of bait. So far there seems to be plenty of bait around to keep these migrating predators happy. Silversides, squid, sand eels and drop-back alewives and blue back herring fill our waters. Find the bait concentrations and you’ll find the fish.

"I had an interesting charter this week with a father and son team who I’ll call "Bill" and son "Andy." I dare not use their real names as the father played hooky from work to take his son fishing for his first striper. Bill had just purchased his first boat and wanted me to give him some pointers on everything from equipment, to launching, to safe boat handling and finding fish. Even before putting in at the boat ramp I had us all don our pfd’s (personal floatation devices). Many boating accidents happen right at the boat ramp, so it’s always a good idea to be prepared before the boat actually goes into the water.

 

"Andy, an energetic eight year older, was so excited about this trip that he hardly got any sleep the night before. His dad said that Andy had been reading all his fishing magazines and was driving him crazy with questions about everything. As soon as we got underway, I too was barraged with endless questions from Andy. Anyone who has ever fished with me knows that I enjoy talking about everything that I’m doing and why I’m doing it. Andy hung on my every word. He was like a sponge absorbing every new bit of information.

 

"Bill, an excellent fly and light tackle fisherman, who has chartered many trips with me over the years, made it clear that this was to be "Andy’s Trip." Normally Bill and I target only large fish and don’t spend much time pursuing smaller fish. That usually means a lot more work fishing deep with heavy sinking lines and large weighted flies. Bill understood that children don’t have the same egos as some of us older, or should I say more "seasoned anglers." He and I remember that in our youth, "catching" was more important than trying to catch trophy fish. This is a very significant point to bear in mind when you are trying to introduce a youngster or spouse into the wonderful world of fishing. So many fresh and saltwater fishermen make the mistake of trying to impress newcomers with trying for "big" fish. Don’t! Size isn’t as important as catching something, and the more the better. This is especially important when dealing with children, as they tend to have a relatively short attention span. They need stimulation and there’s nothing more stimulating than a fish putting a bend in your rod.

 

"Although Andy caught over ten stripers on his first outing, it was that first striper that he caught all by himself on a fly that made the biggest impression on him. That fish, he carefully released, but Andy, he was hooked forever."

"I had planed to stay on shore today, but the light winds and moderate seas convinced me to head out to my hole again.  I called Capt Joe (Dad) around 0830 and told him to meet me at Bourne Marina.  By 0930 we were OTW and headed out.  We got on scene and threw out a pair of eels.  Right away Capt. Joe goes tight.  He fights the fish in and we tape it at 45".  While he is re-eeling I get a pick-up.  When I set on the fish it feels heavy.  It makes 2 long strong runs before heading deep and sulking.  Based on the fish my customers have been getting I knew it was a decent fish but the bigger ones had been making 3 long runs and the mid 40#er would make 2 good runs.  I had trouble lifting the fish out of the 23’ of water.  When I got color I told Capt. Joe to give me a hand, that I had a pretty good fish on.  When I got the fish close he remarked it was a hell of a fish.  Again I though mid 40#s.  When we lifted the fish in it was very apparent it was much bigger.  I put the tape on the fish.  50.5" long and 29" in girth.  I went for the digital camera and realized I left the memory card in the PC at home after yesterdays trip.  Capt. Joe urged me to keep the fish telling me it was the 50 pounder I’d been waiting for.  Against his advice I put the big girl back in the water and she immediately thrashed twice.  On the third time I sent her home.  I watched the big tail move into the deep with mixed emotions.  God knows I wanted to keep that fish, but why?  I wanted to show everyone what I did.  I don’t need the meat; I have plenty in the freezer now.  I’m glad I let her go, my ego is a little bent not having the photo or the fish.  But I think I made the right choice.  Later in the day Capt. Joe hooked another monster fish, he landed it and we taped it.  49" long and 28.5 in girth.  He has not kept a fish this year.  He decided this one would be coming home.  His biggest fish ever was taken off the beach nearly 20 years ago and weighted 37.5 pound.  Many fish have come close over the years but none ever broke his record.  I remember the stories as a kid of that day when he and Uncle Bob got 5 fish that weighted 128 pounds total, the 37.5 being the biggest.  I’m proud to say that Capt Joe has a new story to tell.  It’s about the day he was with his son and caught a 42 pounder together.  The weight was confirmed by Nelson at Red Top this afternoon.  Nelson felt based on the measurements my fish would have been close to 50 pounds like we had guessed.  But that matters little compared to the look on my Dads face when he thanked me for the fish of his lifetime.  I am having trouble typing this as I am not an emotional person, but the screen is a little blurry right now.  Overall it was the best trip of my life with my favorite fishing partner.  The rest of the details don’t really matter.  The summary: Me, Dad, a bucket of eels and a memory that will last forever. "

"Fishing in the Islands over the last week has produced some beautiful action for Striped Bass on the fly and light tackle. It has not come easily however and several very large fish have once again eluded us. With the influx of massive schools of small eels, and other small bait around the full moon there was a distinct change in the feeding patterns of the bass. Many of the large Stripers have moved into water 10-20' deep and are cruising in packs looking to trap bait against the shorelines. As well they are feeding on Lobsters, Squid, and Scup around the rocks. This means that there are several large fish in sertain areas and none in others, as opposed to last week where there were Stripers everywhere. We managed to tease up large fish to the surface on a few days this week and again they lit up with a light northeast, or southeast breeze. The small bluefish are everywhere.... Also look for weaks to come through Buzzards Bay in the next couple weeks with the blues."

"Snapper blues off Scraggy Neck in the a.m. last weekend, was fishing from a kayak, and got a striper off the north side of that causeway to Scraggy from the shore as well."

"My father and I were up in Falmouth for the annual Ct Flyfisherman's Association's trip. We launched out of Green Pond Marina last saturday 6/14. We went and drove out to the rip directly out from the red buoy at the mouth of Green Pond. On the first pass through my father picked up a nice 24" bass. On the second pass through he hooked up again but lost the fish. Both fish were hooked on poppers. Soon after the rip died down and we went into Eel River (pond) which is the western outflow of Waquoit Bay. The mouth of the pond was dead but as we trolled up, we picked up alot of schoolies on clousers. When we reached a marshy area at the opening of Waquoit Bay we just stopped to cast. We had a hit probably every cast. The stripers were in so thick that when you looked directly down you could just see them swirling and taking sandeels. We had countless doubles and the day's totals were upwards of 60 fish. I also managed to sight cast to two 21" fish out of one 1' of water so that was pretty exciting. On Sunday 6/15 we returned to Eel River and the fish were still there. We could have stayed and nailed them all day long but we had to get back early. On the way out of Eel River we trolled and caught two fluke, one fish was @ 17" taken on a deadly dick and another 10" fish took my clouser. These fluke were so aggressive that they came up very high in the water column to take an offering. A sparse chartreuse and white clouser and a longer olive and white with gold flash clouser did the trick on both days.
Two pictures are attached the one with larger fish is my dad's, picked up in the rip. The pic with my rod bent is in eel river.
Thanks, Mark Casali"

"Hey guys, I went out fishing on Falmouth Heights for stripers and found small blues on the water and caught six of them on filleted macks. I made my parents drive me from the Inner Harbor to Menauhant Road because my guts told me that the wind was moving those blues to the west. I found one blues spitting out a peanut bunker or silverside after chomping on my macks."

"East tide was the least tide last night. Fished a number of places but all I could manage to interest were a couple of schoolies. It sure had the feel of summer out there though: warm, muggy, southerly wind, fierce bugs, intermittent mist/showers, tourists casting metals over my line. And also a lot of very small bait and not much chasing it.

"Other than the first half of May, the west tide has been where it's at for me this season."

"Apparently I was due for the outing from hell, cuz I got one this AM. Before I even left the car I managed to chop the tiptop plus several inches off my new rod (don't ask). Luckily I had a backup rod, although last-resort quality.

"Anyway, I was able to catch a few 28-33 inchers, plus some schoolies, all on rubber, which was better than a few days ago. Still had trouble hitting bottom at midtide and at the lower half of the west just the opposite, left over a pound of accumulated lead on the bottom. Plus a wrestling match with a hooked lobster trap that would have looked good on video tape .

"At dawn, switched to mid-Canal and there were a lot of fish on top but way out in the middle for the most part. In any case, the backup rod wasn't going to reach them. Some of those Vee-wakes in close, but nothing chasing them that I could see."

"I hit the extreme west end about 2:30am, plastics, medium conventional. Had multiple hits/hook-ups on almost every cast right up until daylight. The fish ranged from 24-30".

"The entire time I was fishing I suspected bigger things were in the works. I kept noticing the unmistakable "V" wakes, and the distinctive "sucking-popping" sound that can only be made by one thing in the canal...SQUID!

"Before it was light enough to actually see, I could hear the bass out, beyond the range of my lighter rod. as it got light, I started to actually see the V's on the surface, and then see the much LARGER V directly behind the squid, almost as is stalking it's prey.

"The bass were breaking on a real seafood combo today. Squid, dropback herring, and possibly sea herring were shooting out of the water. On 2 different occassions, while I had a fish on, bass were erupting on both sides of me. The fish on the right were chasing squid, the ones on the left were chasing herring. When it gets like this, almost any large plug tossed with 6' of a break results in the trashing, explosive hit.

"I was told the reason the surface activity held up for so long this moring was due to an all night repair on the RR bridge. Apparently the bridge was in the "down" position all night, and until the train went across at 6:30am. The lack of boat traffic must have kept the fish up."

"Ran from Cotuit with the intent to fish Middle Ground with big herring and squid flies, and we had a few live herring as well...wind was ENE and stiff enough to buck the filling tide to 6-8 foot swells with a very short trough length...we had had enough by the time we started to clear L'Hommidieu Shoal...so set up to drift that ample rip and hope for the best...
 
"Everyone hooked up on our very first drift, but only one fish was brought aboard- a very bright and liced 27 pound bass on the boga..
 
"...ran to the head of the rip and you could see bass and blues in the chop, pushing bait...second drift earned two more bass, 29 and 32 inch or thereabouts..and cut-offs from the blues...the drifts were productive, but the 21 Parker was cartwheeling through the rip, shipping water on every trip..the fun factor was dropping, but oooohhhh the fish...
 
 
"It might have been our 5th or 6th drift, might have been our 12th, none of us could really remember later...but losing power in the middle of that drift was not something any of us would soon forget...first thought was that the intermittent wash through the boat had shorted my batteries, but both at once??....besides, I've had more wash in this boat before...ran two quick inspections before the cause was found...a dock-line left on an aft cleat had washed through a scupper and wrapped the prop....1) the line was too long for that cleat position...2) it should have been removed and stowed 3) I looked at that line twice and didn't take the precautionary steps I should've...
 
"..we got it free and powered up, and decided it was time to do some hunting and pecking inside Waquoit for awhile...."

"Had a friend that needed some bluefish to smoke for a wedding so we went out to poppy flats. We worked our way over towards New Seabury and found breaking fish. While small the bluefish (barfed up mostly small sand eels and some silver sides) were plentiful. Between the wind and current we would only manage one hook up per drift by the school. Once we were done with the bluefish, we headed over to check the rips around Succonnessit. Discovered those 30" bass were still in the rip. The way they swarmed a ballistic missile and chased it almost to the boat you'd swear it was a pack of bluefish. Eventually the arms tired from fighting these fish in the rip.

"Since we were the only boat it was easier to stay on the sweet spot by anchoring. It's a big rip but it seemed these fish were hanging in a particular hole. Cast to the right-nothing, Cast to the left and the chase was on. I did spend some time with a squid fly, while it did work, it was not as good as the large orange plug for getting the stripers attention."

"Fishing off the eastern end of the island is really starting to pop.  The rips off Wasque are finally filling with stripers that are more than willing to attack a popper, whether it be a fly or a lure.  Tom Shoal is still the area for the wireliners wanting to jig up larger fish as well as decent sized blues.  The area around Hawes and Norton Shoals has been loaded with bigger blues up to twelve pounds finning on the surface, though they are still in their neurotic pre-spawn mode and are being less than aggressive.  If you want to introduce a child to the thrill of breaking blues, there are tons of 1-3 pounders from the lighthouse in Edgartown all the way around to the jetties on East Beach.  For the shore bound, the highlight of the week has been the reopening of the Edgartown Great Pond.  Falling tide out of the pond is like a dinner bell ringing.  Access is tricky and there have been reports of people trying to take their four wheelers down the beach through private guarded property almost coming to fisticuffs with the guard when turned away.  If you don't mind a hike, the late afternoon/evening tide has been terrific and will probably remain so until the entrance closes back up."

"I was on the island last week. Lobsterville was hot & cold. One night, very slow, the next, fish popping all over the place. I like it 2-3 hours into the outgoing tide all the way to slack low. Sometimes a floating line is better than an intermediate when approaching low tide. This is all after dark fishing. Sometimes at dusk, the fish will start working. I didn't see huge schools of eels last week and when they're thick, you usually snag them while stripping your fly in; we had none of that. The terns are not working the shoreline at dusk. I think the water may need to warm up a bit? Who knows. Anyway, I always go the second week of June and this has been the slowest year I've had from shore. The rips in Middle Ground and Wasque were also slow on the days I fished from boat. Big Bridge on the Edgartown - Oak Bluffs line near State Beach is a very popular spot, as well as the Vineyard Haven harbor on the East Chop side."

"We had good luck on Lobsterville last Friday at night falling tide using sand eel patterns. We managed a few keepers, and lost a few bigger ones. "

"I met up with Patrick Sunday morning to fish Monomoy. The weather was much better than Saturday. We got ready and hit the beach at 9:00. Being low tide we headed south to the rip where the navigation channel comes in tight to the beach.

"Patrick hooks up on cast #2. Man was I relieved! We stayed in that spot, moving slightly four about an hour and a half with steady action. We all moved for the spin rod guy who's fish (30") decided to take him for a Nantucket sleigh ride in the current.

"As the tide started to flood we moved onto the flats. The wind conditions, though light, left enough ripples on top of the water to make it tough to see fish. I picked up (visually) a few cruising and was able to show Patrick what they look like on the flats. He was happy just to see them? We worked pretty hard that afternoon only to get a few more fish. The moon-tide current was a killer.

"We decided to head over to South Beach for the drop. Good move. As soon as we got off the boat, a nice school of big fish came by. I only had time for one quick cast, nothing. We worked north to my favorite SB dropping tide spot. Noticed a few other folks hooking up. As soon as we got in position we had fish all around us, nice ones too. We both caught a few before the moved off. I had several very hard strikes and quick runs, only to loose the fish. Big fish with little hooks don't always make for the best hook sets. I had one fish 30 - 31 inches, which ran very hard in the 3 feet of water we had to work with. To my total surprise I noticed an over-ride about 75 yards into my backing. "Oh Crap". I managed to land this fish, but was very surprised to find this tackle problem. I am very meticulous about my tackle car.

"Patrick and I walked back to OMH. Both us were nearly dead. We had dinner and headed home. Of course we (at least I didi) had to partake in the Cap Code tradition of sitting in traffic on Rt. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

 "I fished the mouth of Old Sandwich harbor on Dad's day from 4:30-6:30am, at the end of the low. Caught lots of tweenies with a half dozen mid-20's mixed in, mostly on small plastics. I then dropped by Scorton Creek (which was at low by that time) just to look at the beach. I was cut off once, and saw a little surface action just offshore by what appeared to be small blues
 
 "The sand eels are definitely around - I saw quite a few laying on the beach at Scorton; wonder what chased them up there?"
 

 
 MatthewP reports:
 

 "I was at the mouth of Old Sandwich Harbor on Saturday. Started at about 7:00 and fished to 4:00 or so, with a break for lunch. Action was slow, but steady. Caught fish on both tides. Mostly twinkies, but a few fish I had to put on the reel (biggest was 6 lbs - I know it's old school to report pounds, but I didn't have a tape measure). My total count was 31 fish for the whole day. I went home happy and sore, with big ole case of striper thumb. Was there to see a guy land his first striper on the fly (nice fish, too). Went back on Sunday night for a few hours. Definitely slower, picked up 5 fish. Went home at 10:00. Flavor of the weekend: Sand Eel patterns on intermediate line."

 
 and BobG ends this week's FishWire:
 
 

"I've been going back and forth betwen sandwich and scorton creek for about 10 days with very poor results. Nothing but twinkies at either location. Scorton's definetly has the upper hand as far as the bait goes. Loads of sand eels. But, I haven't been able to take a decent bass at either location this spring."