Arrived at the Blish Point State Ramp/Landing at 5:55 am, parking lot was mostly empty, maybe 3-5 trucks and trailers. Tide was almost dead low and ramp was covered in 2-3 inches of sand. (this can be tough set of conditions for bigger boats that need much water, although a high tide is easy here)
A big boat was waiting for higher tide and the couple from it informed us that "you should have been here last night" there were hundreds of "chopper blues" right here in the channel.
We launched and started working pods of bait breaking the surface right in the channel, usually this produces at least one fish avoiding the dreaded skunk in the first five minutes. Today, although the bait seemed to being pushed to the surface there were no hits.
As the sun rose we could see fish breaking to the east of the channel along the exposed sand flats and slowly motored that way, a guy on shore yelled to us to work the area in front of him that he couldn’t reach, good thing we did because we were fast into schoolies ranging from 16"-26" as fast as we could land them. With all three flyrods bent at once, the 17’ boat seemed to shrink to about 3 feet in length.
Over the next 1 ˝ hours we followed the birds working in and out from shore out to the first buoy channel marker, all within about ˝ mile of landing.
As things seemed to quiet down we looked for birds and found a few working the rip near the tower (old light house) we worked this then drifted the row of boats out along the point.
A couple more quick bird chases produced more fish, and our biggest droughts only lasted 25-30 mins. Unlike last year here when the fish being put down meant the end of the fishing for the morning they seemed to be more spread out and more consistent throughout the day..
This is the Barnstable harbor I remembered from last fall, although seems to be a little early for the acres of fracas that last year meant a fish on every cast, that’s ok because the fish this year seem to be a little larger and stronger, most of the fish were 18"-24" up at least 4-6" from last year this time.
We put the boat on the trailer just as the start of the rain appeared at around 2:00 pm and headed north to the real excitement of the day, Friday afternoon at 3:00 on Rt 128 & Rt 3 in the rain….
As always a kind word for Bill Downing who writes here often, last year Bill’s simple concise reports of fishing on the Cape lead us New Hampshirite’s to Barnstable Harbor, a real gem…
The fish are definitely "on the feed" for the migration, they took a wide mixture of clousers and deceivers ranging from white to chartreuse to blue, pretty much anything that moved. 8 & 9 wts with sinking lines and teeny lines kept us 2-4 ft down in the water column, deeper was better with the clousers out fishing the deceivers overall.