Cape Cod and the Islands
Region

August 15, 2008

Buzzards Bay

I haven't gotten any really reliable reports from Buzzards Bay this week.  However for the past few weeks, they've had great fishing, with decent fishing coming from both Quicks and Cuttyhunk.  There's nothing that would make me think that's changed.  Oh, and you might want to keep your eye open for bonito...

Falmouth & the Elizabeths

A great report from Demellow outlining what's going on in the Elizabeths:

So far I've had a pretty decent month catching bass. I fish as much as I can and typically get out before work. I usually leave the docks at 4 AM, get to my spot by 5, fish from 5 to 7 and get back to the docks by 7:30. So with this tight schedule I've got no time to mess around trying different areas and techniques. I'll pick a spot and only have enough time to fish this one spot. So here's my results so far this month for keeper bass. During these outings I've caught a number of bluefish and a bunch of just legals and schoolies.

8/5 - 1 20 pounder
8/7 - 1 23 pounder
8/9 - 20, 25 and 15 pounder
8/10 - 22 and 15 pounder
8/12 - 1 29 pounder
today - 1 drag screamer that got off--I had kids with me who didn't know how to fish--I'm still upset about this one because it was a large fish

I've been fishing the same spot each day at the same time of day--false dawn through dawn. As for the location, all I'll tell you is that its around the elizabeth islands. I don't think the location is as critical as its charactertics which can be found anywhere between the canal and the BB buoy.

I'm not married to one technique but lately I've been using the T&W trig on leadcore line and a 4.5 ounce jig on 100 feet of wire line. The depths have been between 25 and 50 feet with most of the fish coming in 30 feet of water. The jig seems to be producing the larger fish but I think this is because its getting closer to the bottom than the tube. This morning's big hook up was on the red tube.

I'm generally not marking lots of fish, particularly on the east flowing flood tides. I think the only day I really marked piles of fish was on 8/5 when the tide was ebbing west in the Sound. I'm catching all of these fish within the first 30 minutes or less of soaking my lines and the rest of the time I'm spending searching for them. It really seems like these big fish are coming into the rocky shoreline areas for only a very brief period around false dawn and then they are gone. This morning was no different. I hooked up on my second pass over the rock pile and then couldn't get a hookup. There were lots of schoolies to be caught on the surface.

I've not done a lot of trolling but have come around to the technique because its effective and can cover a lot of ground. An old timer turned me on to trolling live scup on wire and that prodcued well for me in late July in Buzzards Bay. The nice thing about this is the scup are everywhere and are easy to catch when the pogies can't be found.

Hopefully the month of August will continue to produce right into the fall run. I'm going to try getting out there in the nightime period and drift eels on a three way rig. Stay tuned for the results.

The Cape Cod Canal

Small fish and down deep.  Not the stuff for fly rods.  Scusset has been slow, although I've heard there are both small bass and blues hanging off the end of the canal.  If you can reach them.  Normally, I'd expect to be seeing surface blitzes in the mornings, but this is certainly not a "normal" year. 

The South Side

JimW had this report:

OK it's not my preferred method but when they aren't showing on top to taking a sinking line in the rips I'm up for anything to put some bonito in the cooler.

I hit the hedge fence yesterday after staking out Tashmoo and State beach for a few hours. This was on the incoming tide (Tashmoo was dumping due to inlet) anyway this has been a productive time for me in the past. Maybe I'm just a little early but have heard reports of the bones being taken on the troll. I zigged and zagged at the edge of both sides of the structure in both directions. I tried different speeds between 3- 7 mph taken from the gps so that's t/d over water not accounting for the current speed. That leads me to a question or two.

I realize the zig zag will vary the speed of the troll during a turn but was hooking blues at 6.5 mph trolling a straight line. I'd always thought the rule of thumb was bass 0-2mph blues 2-4 bones 4-6+ don't know where I heard this and maybe I just imagined it. I'd like to hear from the sucessful trollers out there. I had a good running tide from 11-1 and it could be the bointo just weren't in the rip but how fast do I need to troll to keep the blues off my gear.

Keith J reports:

Even with the steaming water there were a bunch of schoolies at the mouth aof waquoit bay this week. Still a walk from south cape but maybe worth it. Fish were inside on the sandbar that extends north up into the bay from the eastern beach. They were blowing up in the evenings. Nothing over 25 inches but all over the place.

Martha's Vineyard

Capt. W. Brice Contessa reports from www.fishingthevineyard.com:

Fishing The Vineyard Report 8/14/08

The name of the game for team Fishing the Vineyard has been bass and blues over the past week. The bonito situation to this point in the season has been disappointing to say the least. They remain out over the shoal water in scant numbers mostly mixed with blues which can be a frustrating situation.

The bass fishing however has remained excellent, with some fast action for this time of year. These fish are not huge, but there are plenty of them with a solid number of keepers (they’re called keepers but we let them go, for posterity) in the mix. The bass are currently on a couple of different kinds of bait including tiny squid, sandeels and juvenile butterfish.

Captain W. Brice Contessa
www.fishingthevineyard.com

Nantucket

At Crossrip Outfitters, we get a twofer this week from Capt. Lynne Heyer:

Where are the Bonito? I certainly have had my ups and downs fishing for Bones this past week. UGH!!! The Bluefishing has been weird too. A couple trips to the South Shore were great then all of a sudden they were hard to come by. We have been discussing this at the shop and it seems that weak tides might have something to do with the weird fishing. Hopefully that wil change. I have heard of a few Bonito being caught from the shore at Great Point and at least one from a boat in the Rip. It was also reported that the bulk of the Seal population has left the Point. I have heard there are a few Stripers being taken at night along the South S hore, you might have to fish the night away but if you put your time in it might be worth it.

Okay, that's tough to hear, but the follow up from this morning was most encouraging:

Just a quick update yesterday Capt Shawn Bristow fished John Clay out East For Bluefin Tuna. Epic day, they tripled up, landed two out of the three. Hooked and landed many brought home for all to share.Capt Jimmy ""Killer"" Kilmartin fished East today and they doubled up and also landed some Tuna's.Congrat to both Captains on catching some good eats.

Cross Rip Outfitters
http://www.crossrip.com

Chatham, Monomoy and the Outer Beaches

PeteV reports:

We were fishing hard the past 2 weeks around Eastham & Wellfleet. Most of the fishing was from the boat but we did do a little from shore (Coastguard beach) , I think I have the worst timing because everytime I hit the beach it was MUNG city. I was even using a pencil popper on the surface but every now and then a wave would catch my line & then it was over, the mung would swallow up the line and it would get so heavy I was amazed my line didn't break. Not to mention we were never alone as a seal or two would always be following us.

But from the boat things were a different story - it was tough but we were pretty consistent with our grand slam (Bluefish, Stripebass, Dog fish) We were fishing mostly around Jeremys point - sometimes heading out to Billings gate shoal and other times working between sunken meadow and billingsgate island. Most of the blues we found were around Sunken meadow (they were 5 or 6 pounders but some were pretty decent size around 30+") . For me it was tough fishing & It seemed like it was at least 200 casts per strike. When we went out to Billingsgate Shoal we found a few bass, I was fishing a squid fly very very deep and was lucky to get an occasional hit as we were dead drifting - but that's where we were also finding tons of dogfish (I hate unhooking those things).

Things to note:
1. we found flipper - for some reason this dolphin seemed to be interested in our boat and for a few days when we’d round the farthest red bouy by billingsgate island this dolphin would surface by us and follow us for a few yards - that was weird - and although I’ve seen dolphin out there before I haven’t had the same one acting as a welcoming committee.
2. there were a bazillion seals out there.
3. it didn’t look like anyone was realy nailing fish - the guys who were catching were working hard for them.

Oh yeah -  we fished Nauset Inlet too and although we caught a couple bass (they were only schoolies) we worked hard to get them.

North Side

Tom T. reports from Sunken Meadow and Eastham:

I was in Eastham/Wellfleet for two weeks (7/26-8/9) and found the fishing very slow around Sunken Meadow Beach, Lt. Island, Great Island and Jeremy Pt. I fish via kayak (mostly for blues) but I fished almost every day and at most caught 2-3 fish and many days came back with nothing. Anyone else have any experience in this location over the last 2-3 weeks? I caught two monster blues near Race Point in P-Town, that was fun.