Lets start with the slams:
bait slam : 10 herring, 1 2 pound pogie, 1 scup
trolling slam: false albacore, spanish mackerel and...drum roll..sea robin!
Add the ubiquitous striped bass and bluefish and you have quite the mixed bag.
The wind was blowing at least 15 all day which made for another slam-bam boating day. After thinking I have broken all hatches in my boat, I found that I also could break the inspection hatch for the bilge. Grr.
Anyways; Waquoit at dawn; drifting eels, a bunch of small bass, nothing spectacular. Bob Parson's Lund really does look blue in half light thru brown sunglasses. When the crowds came I headed east; deciding on the spur of the moment to go to Succonesset in search of mackerel as opposed to goingto Wianno for false albacore.
Succonesset was loaded with birds, bluefish, boats and spanish mackerel. False albacore were around also. Casting for hours produced a bunch of small bluefish, some spanish mackerel bumps on both the fly and jigs, but no takers. From what I could see the schools were extremely small, looking more like tinker or horse mackerel in size.
Ran into a pod or two of false albacore in closeto the shore; headed back out to the shoal with Steve Moore, and at 11 or so decided to quit for a while and hammered home against the wind and sea.
At 2 I headed back; checked Waquoit, saw nothing and pounded back to Succonesset in ugly following seas. By now the boats were gone, only 2 other die hards out there. I'd had it with casting in the wind so decided to change the pace and try trolling. Last time I trolled with metal all I got was bluefish so I tried trolling at 8 knots with 2 1/2 oz bucktail jigs, figuring that would weed out the fast movers from the bluefish.
It worked!
Going through the troughs between the rip I picked up a couple small, 1-2 pound spanish mackerel that were just too small to consider keeping. Shifting focu to the smoother water in front of the rip a rod went off in a whir. By the time the boat was stopped the spool was about 2/3 empty. Fortunately the fish, a false albacore turned and came to the boat allowing me to get it under control and eventually tailed and released.
Did the same pass about 4 more times and picked up another FA which got off when I got it close to the boat and the line twisted around the other trolling setup. So: to all you lone trollers out there:
When you get a fish on and you have multiple lines out - how do you clear the other lines?
Anyways; another 8 knot pass in the face of the rip and the rod started bouncing; I noticed a cloud of birds behind my trolled lures and somtething bouncing in the wake. To my amazement I had trolled up a sea-robin!
Back for another couple passes and BZZZZ! a rod when off. I stopped the boat, but the fish never even paused. For the first time ever I watched my spool melt away as what I assume was a decent sized false albacore headed for the Atlantic. With the seas the way they were it was out of the question to try and go after it. When the line got down to a few wraps from bare metal I tightened the drag and palmed the spool; trying to break it off so it wouldn't die by having to haul around 200 yards of mono. The trick succeeded; the line tightened and stretched an amazing amount and just as I hoped, my line to leade knot broke leaving me with 200 yards of severely twisted and knotted line and the fish with a jig and 12" of leader.
With the wind up, and deciding I wasn't going to top that, I headed for waquoit where high tide was approaching.
Waquoit is wall to wall herring right now; the channel is brown with masses of herring making me think that next weeks conclave could see some big fish.
Anchoring in the gut you could see when predators passed under the school form the beyond - nervous, agitated water. As I suspected and hoped at about 4:30; an hour and a half before high serious schools of false albacore at their way down the channel, spraying bait everywhere; circled back two or three times then headed for the expanses of Waquoit. Pulling achnor I drifted into the bay, making contact w/. the FA's only once or twice, but at least having the pleasure of watching a school of them sweep under my boat, looking like tomahawk missles with their stubby pectoral's outspread.
The FA's seemed to disperse or head up bay; but the bass then moved in to terrorize the herring. I caught far more herring than bass; but had no success livelining a herring on a fly rod.
I also hookd what seemed to be a powerful bass; that I couldn't seem to lift off the bottom with my 7 wt. When I went to grab it - it wasn't a bass; it was a shad - no - a 2 pound pogy which had eaten my white deceiver!
I had brief thoughts of livelining it, but realizing that it was meant for either a 20 pound bluefish or a 40 pound bass, I decided to let it go. had I been in Woods Hole that would have been a different matter....
With early morning offshore trip tomorrow I called it quits early, slammed home again and called it a day.