G-Ma(Greg), my brother (Grant), and I fished Monomoy via kayak Saturday morning. As we reached Monomoy we were greeting by diving birds eating sand eels. As one would hope, there we bass underneath. Gregg hooked up immediately and it was good action for the next hour or two. We could have continued to work the school, but we decided to hit the flats.
We paddled and fished the flats via wading for the next couple of hours with decent success. Gregg was using a sluggo and did very well casting to the deeper channel just off the flats. I fished the flats, sight casting only. I saw a decent amount of fish and landed one striper. The fish were a bit spooky and the wind was tough in the afternoon, limiting visability. Or maybe I'm just not that good. My brother just flew in from San Francisco on Friday morning and was napping much of the afternoon. FYI: The flats make an excellent place to nap.
Couple of lessons learned and/or observations:
- Take these with a grain of salt as this is only the second time I've fished the area.
- Gregg had a SOT with wetsuit which worked much better than the SINK kayak on the flats. Please review my previous posts regarding the virtues of SINK and put a big asterisks next to it. In a perfect world I'd have both.
- Bring a spin rod with sluggo. The normal Monomoy set-up is not great for fishing deep water or channels, especially against the wind. Gregg was able to effectively fish water that us fly rodders could not.
- Bring a spare rod. My brother broke his fly rod in 4 pieces as we were dragging our kayaks across some flats in the late morning. Gregg saved the day because he had a spare.
- Bring an anchor. When the bass were chasing the sand eels it was very difficult to fish effectively due to the wind and tides. After struggling for about 45 minutes, I anchored up and that worked much better.
- Getting there early (+/-): We were at monomoy around 7:00 and there was very little human activity. This allowed us to fish the school of bass. By 9:00 boats were starting to pour in and the areas off the flats get very busy. It also reduces the amount of wind you need to worry about. As the day goes on the wind picks up and makes the sight casting tougher. However, to fish the flats you don't need get up at the crack of dawn. I saw more fish at 1:00 PM than at 10:00 AM. Tide and location are more important.
- Bring rocks (
). Many of the boats drive very fast and don't care. As an example, Gregg was wading at the edge of the flats and I was anchored just off the flats. We were both casting to fish in the middle of us. We couldn't have been more than 40 feet apart when a boat traveling at full speed splits the two of us. Be careful when paddling in deep water.
- Fish with new people once in a while. Between this trip and my previous Reel-time yak trip I learned a lot of things about kayak fishing. Sam, Pete (previous trip), and Gregg all had much better setups than I did and did things differently. I learned quite a bit by just by fishing with them. I even learned something from my napping brother. Don't be afraid to make a day out of monomoy. Bring lunch, take a nap, bring a football for low tide etc.
Standard View
