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Cape Cod &the Islands
September 16th, 2004 |
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| FishWire Coordinator: | Dave Churbuck |
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Fish Hugger
One of the greatest dilemmas in the world of fishing is the concept of catch and release. Nothing will get an Internet forum like Reel-Time hopping faster than a disagreement over the issue of letting fish go. The age old bait broke out again this week -- twice in separate threads -- so I thought I’d tell you all to shut up and listen to the moral authority that is me. I am right. Trust me. Catch and release is to fishing what the concept of "counting coup" was to Sioux Indians. The braves would ride screaming across the Great Plains wearing warpaint just to rush up and touch somebody with a stick. As if to say, "Take that sucker. I could of -- but chose not to -- kicked your butt and tucked you in for a dirt nap." The concept of catch and release is a simple one to grasp: catch a fish and let it go so it can live to be caught again by less enlightened souls who will kill it and eat it. This begs the big question that plagues all catch and releasers: what is the point of fishing if you don’t eat the fish? To play with a fish for your own adrenal enjoyment, to impale its lip with a hook, and then let it go because you’re a good person, a better man than the nasty fish eater? Nah. I think catch-and-release, as opposed to catch-and-filet, turns a fisherman into a benevolent god for a few minutes, staying the hand of death after holding something marvelously alive in their hands for a few moments. Or, less poetically, someone who doesn’t want to be bothered with cleaning their catch. The case can be made that people who let their fish go are doing the right thing, taking only what they need, finding a little sport in the great outdoors, and in general being good environmental citizens who give a hoot about such stuff as global warming and trash on the beach. Yet for some reason there is a wild-eyed group of people who see bloodsports such as fishing and hunting as all-or-nothing affairs. Either you go onto the water, rod in hand, to find food, or you’re playing with yourself. This is not a concept that bedevils deer hunters. I have yet to hear of any one taking out a buck with a rubber riot bullet, taking their picture with the stunned creature, and then reviving it with a tank of oxygen so it can run away to be knocked out another day. That’s why I don’t hunt. It’s a little too black and white for me. My biggest fear, in my myopia, is winging some poor critter that will limp off to die in a bush. I have no remorse about dumping a fish back into the ocean, watching it sort of limp away from the boat, and then convincing myself that it will grow up someday to be the next Fish President or Mahatma Gandhi of the oppressed piscine masses. Sure it will. If there is a continuum of fishermen, and at one extreme are those people who kill everything they catch, if even they don’t eat it -- we’ll call these people the Ted Bundy’s of the fishing world -- and on the other extreme are those people who let everything go that they catch: we’ll call them the Fish Huggers -- then I suspect, as with most statistical samples, the rest of us fall someplace in the middle of the bell curve, eating a few fish here and there, letting a few fish go. I’ve fished with catch-and-kill types. These guys get angry at the concept of slot limits, minimum sizes, or daily bag limits. Generally they are type-A personalities who got short changed in the personal plumbing department. The catch-and-releasers? If I meet another mystically charged striper mystic who rhapsodizes about gamefish status, can sling around statistics about circle hooks, and year-of-yonng indices, who gets bug-eyed about the EEZ, the AFSMC, the CCA, the CIA, the SOMF .. Now I agree there are some fish that just plain shouldn’t be eaten on the basis that they can’t be eaten: dogfish, toadfish, and hagfish come to mind. And there are others that I wouldn’t eat at gunpoint but for some reason are suddenly in vogue: like sea robins, thanks to an ill-informed article in the New York Times’ Dining Section such as "Hoboken's Portugese Culinary Treasure: The Sea Robin" which sends every Martha Stewart wanna-be rushing to their fish market looking for dreadful flotsam like skate wings and cod cheeks. I'd like to meet the desperate fool who first ate a sea urchin. There are species of fish that are endangered according to those who count fish, and which make iffy meals to begin with. I mean, do you really want to grill a manatee? My Weber would collapse. Fricasee a Great White? Kebab a Blue Marlin? Then there are those gentle souls who set them all free. Who eat nothing. God bless them. But you have to wonder what conflicted urge is sending them out to the beaches with barbless hooks when they could be manning the Peace Booth at the Barnstable Fair handing out alarming leaflets about genocide and third world water quality. There are some interesting religious cults in the world with adherents who sweep their path before them as they walk to avoid stepping on ants, who won’t eat plants that grow underground (like carrots or potatoes) because the act of unearthing them is so violent. These people wear veils over their mouths so they don’t inhale bugs. I dated a girl like that once. She was a comparative literature major who dressed in black and cried when I ordered a steak. She told me she never ate anything with a face on it. I asked her if that included jellyfish. That relationship never blossomed very far, in part due to my carnivorous ways, in part to due to her reliance on home-made organic deodorants and the unhappy habit she had of crying while we made out on her couch. What are the bloody sins I need to be absolved of? There are so many ... Bless me father for I participated in the exploding of a bluefish with a cherry bomb once at the Town Dock with some bad kids. It was my cherry bomb and my bluefish. Someone else lit the fuse. A dozen Hail Mary’s for me because I once caught an eel on a drop line, dragged it up the street through the sand because I was six and I was afraid of it. I showed it to my grandmother who found a hammer and a 60 penny spike and nailed it through the head to the barn door. She then circumcised it with a paring knife and skinned it like a dirty sock with a pair of pliers. She fried it in butter and pointed out the disgusting fact that the eel segments continued to move as they were cooked. I didn’t eat any. My brother-in-law once caught a very tenacious bluefish on a plug. The plug was totally inhaled by the bluefish and since it was my plug and since the plug cost five dollars, I decided to get it back. I tried the old gentle technique of trying to forcibly rip it out with a pair of pliers, but the bluefish objected most strenuously. So I decided to filet the bluefish. (how many people have no problems filleting a live fish? I don’t. I subscribe to the "Fish have no nerve endings" School of Denial Ichthyology) Which I did, rapidly, on a piece of old maple flooring I keep under the bow of the world’s dirtiest boat. I got the plug back -- by pushing it down through the fish -- then consigned the skeletal remains to Davy Jones’ locker. The fish swam away. This was a fish out of Wes Craven. A Friday the 13th meets Freddy Fish. A veritable Devil fish. I left a bucket full of shiners in the sun once. A thirsty chipmunk fell into the bucket and drowned. I felt worse about the chipmunk’s death than the minnows. I buried the chipmunk in a cigar box and froze the dead shiners for fluke bait. Why? Because the chipmunk was furry, and there are no cartoons about minnows? No helium-voiced singing minnows like Alvin and the Chipmunks? Relative moral ethics can be a tough nut to crack. Now, back to the easy part. Telling you where the fish are so you can rush out and catch one and then ponder your deity-like powers for an instant and determine whether (thumbs up or thumbs down?) if that sea robin is going to return to its family and make more sea robins or if its tail is going to be turned into some nasty, over-sauced kitchen stinker you saw Emeril make on the Food Channel. There are fish. There are many fish. Everything is lighting up. Bait balls abound. Winds have been low (for now), and the beaches are devoid of tourists, amateurs, and other distractions. If I were to give one tip, it would be this: think south Cape -- anywhere from Monomoy to Mattapoisett -- arm yourself with Bonito Bunnies on sinking lines, and look for bait balls. Beaches? Craigville and Dowses come into their own in a big way this time of year. South Cape has some serious albie schools parading up and down it on Tuesday morning. Woods Hole has had bonito catchable from the docks and bulkheads. The Poge Gut is a mob scene because it is the Derby, but hey, where would you rather be than Martha’s Vineyard in September? Canal seems very fishable these days as well. All in all, weather permitting this weekend; this is a very, very good time of year to be a saltwater fisherman on Cape Cod. Don't forget to send me your own reports, and until next week...
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Cape Cod Regions
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Let's see. So much to choose from. Epic reports from all regions. Canal is cooking nicely. Cape Cod Bay showing all sorts of fish. Derby Time on the Vineyard. Albies and blues and macks along the south cape. Throw a dart at the map and fish there. |
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Captain Joe LeClair remind us, this is the month to get in your licks: "When you are sitting at home watching the snow fall you will think back to the times you got out on the water in September. I have been able to catch bluefin tuna on the fly and spin rods this past week with tremendous success. I have been targetting fish between 25-75 lbs. because they are perfect for the fly rodders. These fish are more aggressive and will take a fly near the boat (60 feet) and the battle can be handled on a 13-14-15 weight fly rod with 30 lbs. tippet in around 20-25 minutes. For the more seasoned anglers we have also been trying to get larger tuna on the fly. For those that are willing to put the time in (years) this is the ultimate challenge in the fly fishing world. Thown into the mix this week has been great fishing for Stripers and Blues on the way out or on the way back in. All in all this is a great time of year. It’s mid September, Buzzards Bay waters are full of baitfish and the water/air temperatures are dropping. What does all that mean… It’s migration time!!! That’s right, baitfish are feeding heavily and growing rapidly in preparation for their pilgrimage to distant waters. Stripers, bluefish, false albacore, bonito and countless flocks of feathered predators will be right on their heels, or should I say fins. It’s chow-time in the Bay and it’s all about eating and avoiding being eaten. This is the prime time of the year for you to get into some bragging-sized fish. So whether you’re a boat or a shore-bound angler, now’s the time to get on the water. It really doesn’t make as much difference as to what time of day or night that you get there, just get there. As the migration progresses major blitzes can take place at any time. So, turn off the TV (you can always listen to the Sox beating up on the Yankees on the radio), hide the rake, disconnect the spark plug from the lawn mower and rehearse your favorite (“Can’t come in to work today.”) or (“Honey, I have a sick friend down the Cape who needs me to help him pull his boat.”) lines. Remember, it’s a short migration season and a mighty long winter. Striper fishing in the Bay has definitely picked up this week. We have been into larger schools of hungry schoolies ranging 22”-27”. Bluefish schools join the schoolies providing dramatic surface displays. Anglers using poppers and slider flies on intermediate lines have been having fantastic non-stop topwater action. Larger stripers to 38” are feeding on the stragglers, wounded baitfish and scraps from below the surface feeding schoolies and blues. Large weighted clousers and half and half patterns fished deep have been the ticket for these larger and savvier linesiders. False albacore continue to work the edges of the deep waters along the Cape Cod Canal as well as the old canal route. Small baby bunker and bunny flies half proved very successful. The best approach for casting to these speedsters is to watch for a travel pattern that these fish take, and then set yourself in a drift that will intercept them. Remember, using a “Run and gun” approach is the surest way to put these fish down. Chasing these fish around trying to get a cast off at them is an act of futility. Also, you won’t be making any friends with the other boaters in your area if you are constantly disrupting them with your wake. Keep in mind too, you are always responsible for any problems that your wake causes. Bonito? Well although we have had some small pods show up, their numbers have so far been disappointing. On one trip this week we had set up to intercept a pod of false albacore only to be surprised when a small pod of bonito surfaced instead. We both hooked up, but only one fish was brought to the boat. We never saw another pod until the following afternoon when for or five pods worked our area at the same time. We never got a hit from these fish. They drive you crazy…Hopefully the storms will hold off so that we’ll get many more shots at both of these fantastic species. Mumichog reports: "The mid-Cape has albies (and some spanish mackeral) moving around, especially early. Sunday and Monday mornings we were on them along the beach then inside the bay mouth. Lures or flies, the secret seemed not to be so much what you threw, more important was dropping it on their nose and they would eat. Afternoon on the mid-cape was slow on Monday so we hit Megannsett Harbor area (just outside the harbor jetty) on Buzzards east side and nailed some Alberts there as well! "Stopped at Plymouth on our way north and scored a tasty desert of some blitzing stripers as the sun went down on a fine day of fishing. Plymouth Bay is loaded with herring and other bait. So is Cotuit (West) Bay." "Sat. I didn't see any action in WH early AM, so I slogged a ways up BB into the building N wind. I marked some fish, but no surface action that was visible over the whitecaps. I gave up after a few miles and went downwind to the Sound. More of the same. Nothing around Tarpaulin or Lackey's. Back along the South Cape after noon, I finally found a healthy pod of albies (I think) busting bait just before a 25' Parker blew right through the middle of them. Never saw them again, and only saw a few sporadic splashes after that. Had no shots. I finally got a shot at some fish that turned out to be Spanish. I decided to donate a fly (since I wasn't rigged for sharp teeth), but even that went untouched. No runs, hits, or errors." |
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BobG reported on Sunday: |
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The ditch is getting better and better. Hawkeye reports: "Put in a couple hours this am around sagamore and did well on schoolies up to 32". Only one blue in the bunch. I had a grin on my face the whole time with hits on almost every cast and many hookups. I was using a jig-n-pig." BobG reports on Thursday: "Hey, it's good to be back on the rocks! |
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Stripers are back inside the estuaries -- schoolies chasing baby herring -- but lots and lots of snapper blues to bite off your flies. Bluefish blitzing like no one's business all along the south side. Albies observed off the parking lot of South Cape Beach on Tuesday morning. Eyeballed a spanish mackerel do the polaris missile launch thing. |
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Captain Leslie Smith is in her element as it is Derby Time on the Vineyard: "The crowds are gone, the roads aren't gridlocked, every truck has rods on top and the fishing's just starting to get good again. It's Derby time and the first week has started with some pretty nice fish coming in to the weigh station. To keep up with results, go to www.mvderby.com. Bonito and albies continue to zip around the Edgartown Harbor area, as well as off Cape Poge and the Gut. The Hooter has had lots of bones, as well as blues and stripers. Being the Derby, disinformation becomes an art form, so shore info is rather scarce and probably unreliable. But you can expect that every jetty on the island has someone casting for funny fish and the beaches are busy at night with anglers searching for big cows. Albies are coming on strong, which means the bonito will start to get scarce." |
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Captain Lynne Heyer at Crossrip Outfitters says: "As I look out the window the sun is shining and it’s pretty nice outside. Can’t believe everything you read on the weather reports. The wind is picking up though. Guess you can’t have everything. Even the Blue Angels bugged out without doing their thing. The hurricane blasted their home base of Pensacola. One pilot told us it’s the first time they have ever cancelled a show. I have to admit that taking care of their families is more important. Bwana reports from the island: "Some albies and a few Spanish mackeral at Great Pt. A few albies in the harbor.Blues off airport." |
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The Outer Beaches, Chatham & Monomoy Sorry. No reports from this region this week. Must be a strike going on. |
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Terry Nugent reports from Cape Cod Bay: "I picked up Jared around 1000. He had the winning bid on my trip at the CCA auction. We launched out of Plymouth and headed to the area that had been holding fish the past few days. Conditions for the run were FAC and the ride was fast and flat. We got to the area I had been fishing but the water temps had dropped again and the fish and birds were gone. The whales and other sea life made me sure that we were close but off just a bit. We did some fast recon and after about 20 minutes we found the warmer (64 degree) water and we found the fish. Numerous pods of fish were working the area and each had a ton of birds over them. I set Jared up on pod after pod as they balled up bait on the surface. Time after time he would throw right on the fish and come up dry. Within the first hour he had 2 quick hits that failed to connect. After another dozen shots Jared hooked up only to have the fish come off after a short run. We were both getting a little frustrated. How a fish that large can swallow a 7/0 hook that is razor sharp and NOT get stuck is beyond me. Finally as the day wore on we found a pod of fish that were not moving at all. They were on the surface balling bait and tearing things up. Jared made several casts into the pod and got a few follows. Finally luck went our way and a tuna burst from the pod and engulfed his jig. Jared set the hook and we were in the game! The fight lasted about 10 minutes and took us around the boat 3 times. When it was all over Jared was looking down on the deck at his first ever Bluefin tuna! The fish weighed about 60# and was chock full of 2" Rainbait. We quickly photo'd and preped the fish and packed it on ice. After a rinse of the boat we were back on the hunt. The problem was we seemed to have lost our fish and our water. We began to search again but never were able to locate the fish or the warmed water we had earlier in the day. Finally we decided to head for home. En Route we found a small pod of BIG fish in some 60 degree water. We each got a few casts into the brutes but were unalbe to hook up. It's probably not a bad thing since none of the fish in this pod looked to be under 150#. It looked like 55 gallon drums slicing under the surface! Final tally for the day, 4 hit, 1 foul tip, and 1 home run! Jared got his first ever tuna and handled it like a pro. The water temps were 64-65.5 and the fish were eating 1"-2" juvi herring or some other tiny juvi bait. The lure of choice was the same Maria jig from the past few days. The fish were on the move and seem to be migrating already. Overall it was a great day OTW. The inital FAC conditions help tremendiously in locating the fish. It also made for a great show, since we were able to see the tuna as they knifed accross the surface. The whales, dolphins and sharks all added to the day. We had constant whale action and at times even had dolphins running along side the boat. Just a great day to be OTW with a great fisherman." ScottNe reports from the same waters: About 2pm all hell breaks loose. Fish after fish for 3 straight hours, 90 percent bass. Largest was ~35 pounds, nothing smaller than 13-15 pounds. Total number of keepers not including fish lost at the boat side were 26, 5 shorts all around 26-27", and on again off again 7-9 pound blues that tallied 15. Also caught the biggest mumichog I've ever seen, had to be 9". Thing had a set of choppers that would make a bluefish jealous. We stayed into the fish until 7pm at slack when the bait vanished and the fish followed. Bait was small, 1-2" juvi bait of one type or another. Some a fesity sunfish that broke the surface maybe once every 3 hours in true belly flop fashion. Saw what might have been a pod of tuna...there were reports on the VHF of these fish being nearby...can't confirm. Did see a seal or porpoise abusing fish around 12...literally tossing them up in the air and then disappearing with them. We were slow on the uptake a few times today and I think blew some true giant fish opportunities. We were drifting at a good clip at one point with no sock out and got into the blues over the bass...it took us maybe 30 minutes to make the connection that the fast drift was the problem. Breakdown of fish was approximately 10-12 fish from 15-20 pounds, 5-7 fish 20-26 pounds, 5-7 fish over 30 pounds with the rest shorts. The sizes vary slightly because I have no way of assigning weights to pictures with the camera and I don't want to take the time to do it with a fish out of water. Pictures of most if not all keepers to follow to silence the peanut gallery. We kept two that were hooked funny, not one other fish was out of the water for more than two minutes and that included the photos. We caught them primarily on jigs, some eels and some trolling." Keep those reports coming, |