Bay...Gooooood

[Go Fish]

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Big metal for the first one, big rubber for the second, big feathers and deer hair for the third.

55 degrees, 18 feet of water and Pogies for bait. We fished the bottom of the fallig tide, took a break during slack and fished the start of the flood. The boat managed 20-30 fish...all were 15+.

It was a very good day!

[Go Fish]

Sorry about the spotty content of the previous post. I was in a hurry and wanted to get the important stuff in there.

I fished the same locations yesterday with similar results although the fish were smaller:

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Both Saturday and Monday we started out by fishing Barnstable Harbor on the falling tide. Saturday we just fished the deep parts of the harbor and Monday we ran way up into the creeks. I don't know what is going on there this year year but it isn't fishing very well for me. Of course, I was told "you should have been here Sunday. There were squid and big fish everywhere" On Monday we picked up a small keeper at the harbor mouth before we blasted out into the bay. Temps in the creeks are already in the high 60s.

Both days, I would have missed the "in the Bay" bite had I not stopped to check out the area around active draggers. I don't advocate getting in the way of these guys working, but pay attention to the area around them because if they are there so is the bait. Fish wern't showing on top but using the sounder to our advantage helped us hone in on the fish. Jigs and flies on sinking lines worked well. This action only happend with moving water. As soon as the tide hit low the fish stopped eating.

Monday afternoon was one of the coolest experiences I've had fishing for stripers. Durring slack tide we drove all over creation looking for a good concentration of bait to set up on until the tide started moving. We found the bait by finding blue fish on top and caught a mess of them on the flyrod.

By the time the water started moving the wind had completely died. Water temp was right at 60 F, it was glassy smooth, hot as hell and there were big wolf packs of stripers everywhere you looked. But you had to look hard. There were only showing a fin tip or making really subtle nervous water. The conditions made the fish ultra spooky and really tough to fool. The key was to figure out which direction they were going and get baits to where you thought they might end up. As the fish closed in, a couple twitches was all it took to excite a strike or put the fish down. The fishing was really tough naking it a little frustrating and super fun. There were some really big fish mixed in with the 15 lbers we were getting...by really big I mean bigger than I have ever seen. 4-5 foot fish for sure. We had no luck getting these monsters to eat but it sure is cool to know they exist...outside of my imagination...

We worked these fish with two other boats. A charter cappy and another really good fisherman. The amount of respect for the fish and other fishermen was exemplary. None of us got anywhere near the others and we never got above idle speed. One boat running around would have made all these fish sound for good.

All in all it was a great couple of days on the water.

[LandlockedinMI]

I thought decorum was dead. It is enough to give ya hope.