I took the remaining 4 eels of my thunderstorm interrupted half dozen to Waquoit Bay at dawn today in pea-soup, thank god for GPS fog and had a blast.
Rising with the dawn I found a weird post thunderstom morning; stick warm, but w/. gusts of wind and thick, thick fog. From my window I could barely make out the channel markers of Green Pind a quarter mile away.
PLan A had been to head back to Nobska by boat; far too dangerous in the fog , so instead I put the southwest wind at my back, set up the GPS and picked a course of 105 degrees for 1.86 miles. Bingo, on the dot the jetties of Waquoit materialized out of the fog.
So did something else; a raucous medley of diving terns and crashing waves with surfacing fish. The outflow of Waquoit's ebb against the southwest breeze was putting up a maelstrom a hundred yards square of 3 foot vertical faces waves. With breaking fish and racing fish visible throughout.
Tossing a jig I was pleasantly surprised to bring in a 20"ish stripers on the first cast. Next cast, small blue. By then I had drifted out of the action, repositioning I found myself taking water over the transom as the steepness of the chop poured over the back of the boat. A quick jog forward and the self bailing feature of the Mako proved its worth; this time I repositioned to take the chop on the boats higher shoulder to keep it out of the boat.
Anothe drift yielded another mixed pair of bass and blues. Third time though was a bluefish duo. Realizing that if there were bass in the mix of the outflow that I should be able to find better bass in by the jetties I changed the game plan and moved in close to the jetty tip.
I hooked an eel onto the eel rod and tossed it at the tip of the jetty. The current and wind pushed me almost perfectly parallel to the jetty while the eel drifted back past the jetties tip and seaward. As it passed the jetty tip I felt the eel be picked up and the loose drag sing. Counting to three I set had. And missed. And had the eel be picked up again. And waited till three. Set. And missed.
By now I wa sout of range so I repositioned the boat and recast the eel. Same result. Good hit, but no hookup. By the fourth drift I had figured it out; rather than closing the bail on loose drag; I left it open, holding the line lightly with my fingertips. When I felt a pickup I let go of the line, counted to three, closed the bail, cranked once, twice to get tension and set hard. With a tight drag preset I was getting 3 out of 4 hookups.
The eels served to cull out the smaller bass; I was getting 3 or 4 fish per eel before it either dissappeared or was beat up to much to use again. The fish ranged in size from perhaps 24" up to the low 30's; nothing spectacular, but a very welcome change from the microbass that I had been seeing for the past few weeks. I got to land perhaps 8 or 10 of these fish which combined to put some nice bass scars on the first knuckle of my thumb. As an aside, you know you landed a big bass when you get bass scars on your wrists!
I ended up keeping a gut hooked 30" fish which came aboard bleeding from the gills. Its the first striper I kept in the past 3 years and the new limit of 28" worked in my favor as it would have a waste to have put this fish back. Since a 30" fish is at most 10 pounds in weight, I ended up with perhaps 5 pounds of meat which is perfect for a family of 4.
I eventually quit due to weather as the wind picked up to the point that the inlet mouth was looking pretty threatening, so rather than find myself in fog and dangerous seas, I called it a day, reset the GPS for Green Pond, set out for 1.86 miles on a heading of 284, and like magic, found myself right where I wanted to be.
To my amusement, 15 minutes after I entered the pond, the fog lifted to a beatiful sunny day.