having suitably atoned for some of my sins and having self-sacrificed by passing on an offshore expidition I was granted my freedom after services and headed capewards at 1.
SW 10-15 made the beachfront tough; lots of weed in the water. As I expected bass were schooled along the falmouth shore; deep. The only thing I could pick them up on was deep swimming rebels, jigs, flies, metal and poppers didn't work though the popper drew a couple follows. Bright sunshine no doubt contribuetd to the basses spookiness.
Went inside waquoit and found at least 2 big 30 yard square schools of bluefish tearing across the bay; visible as a moving dark patch in the 4' depths of the flats. They were tough; flies didn't work as they were on herring by the millions and both the herring and blues were ripping here and there. Poppers didn't work, never got a single strike. metal might have worked but I launched my only suitable tin towards Martha's Vineyard. Finally I got the equation - 3/4 oz. yellow lima bean head jig with 2" bucktail drew strike after strike while my bullet head and round jigs struck out. I suspect the lima bean head jig and its bulky bucktail had more of a herring profile than the others.
Anyways one school was normal 24" bluefish, fall fat and as ever, evil nasty and mean. The other school was much bigger, I boated 3 and released a bunch boatside. Of the 3 I boated one was 28" and the other 2 were just over 30" and probably 10#+ blues.
I also hooked and lost my best fly bass of the year in my private little waquoit bass hole. The line was down at the bottom as I was fiddling with something; I went to trip it in and it came tight and the fish was off in a rush. I saw backing for a good 5 minutes got back onto the line, saw backing again, got back into the line, never got to the 15' shooting head when the hook pulled. I had a glimpse once of what looked like a nice mid 30's# inch bass. Oh well; so it goes.
At dusk the wind was coming up and I decided it was not a good nite to be out alone at waquoit after dark so boogied for home.