Checked out Lighthouse Beach in Chatham on Wednesday night. Things looked promising
as I walked down the beach. One guy had a keeper landed and two others had
fish on as I walked by. I attached an eel and just tossed it in the wash to get
it to calm down a bit. Next thing I know, the line is flying off the reel. A few
minutes later, I slid a 34 inch linesider onto dry land and quickly released it.
Surprisingly, that was the only catch of the night for me, although I had several
fish playing with the eel but not taking it.
Thursday morning dawned chilly at the east end of the Canal but the fishing was
anything but. Very few fish on top, but loads of schoolies below. The whole
Sandwich basin is a goldfish bowl filled with bass to 24 inches, with undoubtedly
some lunker specimens beneath them taking bait and deeply worked jigs. No problem
at all catching about 2 dozen in a couple of hours. The bigger fish came before
dawn at pole 20 on the mainland side but many other fish were spread out amongst
the pilings further west and plenty on the power plant side as well. White bucktail jigs with white fly teasers worked best.
The fish were well within flycasting range.
Later that afternoon, I visited the Sandwich Marina area. Enormous quantities of
baby herring were pinned up against the bulkhead by hungry schoolies. Many people were
livelining, but the schoolies were easily catchable with tins and jigs. The good
news is that the bait is bigger and more easily imitated than the silversides
of several weeks ago.
Finally, walked Nauset Town Beach from the parking lot for about a 1/2 mile north.
Picked up a few schoolies on jigs, but nary a hit on eels. Many 4WDs parked
just short of Nauset Inlet and many people fishing the bowl just shy of it. I
suspect good things were happening, but didn't have the time to walk that far.
-bd