You never know what a few days of ridiculous wind will do to the bait and stripers.

Prior to the wind, there was a bit of a slowdown in the canal, but the Monomoy Rips were holding a big biomass of fish and the pogy schools from the East End up to Marshfield were being shadowed by some cows.

Yesterday gave us a chance to finally assess the damage…and yesterday, the canal was hot. Again. So, the pattern continues.

We made a post-work exploratory cruise into Plymouth Bay yesterday and found loads of schoolies blitzing squid and silversides on the flats during the incoming tide. And they were hungry, eating anything we threw at them. This bodes well for the rest of the Bay.

We could only find two small pogy schools with no bass around them, so they either got snatched up by the roaming draggers or the south wind blew them out into the Bay. Hopefully they’ll be back.

This weekend, we’ve got breaking tides (and a pretty sweet blood moon tonight). You know what this means. Don’t expect to get a spot all to yourself if you’re fishing the Ditch.

The Plan

The East End seems like as good a bet as ever for Saturday and Sunday mornings. We’ve got the start to the East running tide around dawn both days, so we should see some good surface action. Mackerel have been plentiful, so we’ll try to load up the well.

The West End into Buzzards Bay is another option. With packs of roaming gorilla blues and big schools of stripers staging at slack before they enter the Canal, it could be pretty epic out there.

Another good bet will be to find the pogy schools. The bass seem to be shadowing the schools and only eating early, so if you can get on a school with striper marks underneath it early, get the snagging hooks out or throw a big Guppy or Doc Spook. This worked for us last weekend (see previous report).

I haven’t heard anything about Sandy Neck to Scorton. This time last year, you could cruise down there and mark fish carpeting the bottom for acres. Either the fish aren’t there or the folks fishing that area are being very tight-lipped.

The Monomoy Rips should continue to hold solid fish. You can’t beat throwing a big plastic or fly into the whitewater and watching it get inhaled by a hungry striper. There’s a good chance you could find a couple yellow-eyed devils in the mix.

That’ll do it. Good luck this weekend, folks. Everyone play nice and don’t go getting into fights at the Ditch.