Not much changed this week for those of us keeping ever increasing tabs on the movements of our striped friends. But I’m not complaining. The status quo, in this case, is a good one to maintain. Bass 22″-26″ are still blitzing just about every tide in Buzzards Bay, along the Southside, and along the beachfronts in Cape Cod Bay.
The Three Bays and Barnstable always tend to lead the charge in terms of first stripers North of the Cape. And lead the charge they did. Fish of the same South of the Cape sized-class have been blitzing around Barnstable, the Three Bays, and up into Boston. Warmer nights, the incoming new moon, and the bigger tides associated with the moon phase all spell the arrival of the larger 28″-36″ bass we’ve been waiting for. Herring and mackerel are in position out front.
The bays South of the Cape and in Buzzards Bay are loaded with all types of bait–larger silversides, river herring, squid, and of course, the near-microscopic “snot-bait” that we usually associate with finicky albie feeds. so I would imagine they would stick around for a while before heading into the funnel. This all depends on where the bait goes. If mackerel head through the canal as they typically do, these fish could end up in the ditch.
The report
I started the week fishing a river with a herring run on the incoming at night. I was rewarded with a few of my bigger fish of the year–fat 26″ fish bulky from slurping up protein-rich alewives and bluebacks. I caught the bigger fish on a beat up blurple Swarter, but Bill Hurley Sand Eels produced as well.
On Thursday, we had just about our only stretch of calm winds. We hit Buzzards Bay early and found birds and bass blitzing everywhere we looked. Sound familiar? Yup. These fish have been here for 10 days or so. If you’ve fished these areas in this time frame, you know how finicky they’ve been. The bass are eating micro bait. I caught plenty of these picky fish on a on a size 2 surf candy fished slow on an intermediate line cast on their heads. On the spin, we had the most luck with a Bill Hurley sandeel dropped all the way to the bottom and jigged slowly up. Topwater un un-weighted soft plastics didn’t work nearly as well as I thought they would.
Seabass opens up on Monday (!). Get your bucktails and Gulps ready. We found plenty of scup and some seabass while jigging for stripers in Buzzards Bay, so I’m predicting another great season of inshore bottom fishing.
Haddock remain in those nearshore spots. Focus your efforts around 140-160′ of water if you’re not heading out to the bank. Most days, clams are outproducing artificials.
This is the week the big fish show up. We’ll be focusing around Buzzards Bay searching out larger bait. See you out there.
