Saturday, I had Mark a friend from work on board. Mark had never fished from a boat or never done any real fishing for that matter. I really wanted to put him on some fish and had prepared a trip that would take us all around CC bay until we could find some life. I was hoping to at least find some big blues. A good way to introduce somebody to saltwater fishing. We launched from Green Harbor at 0530. The ramp was already busy, but everybody was very efficient and got their boats in very quickly. We headed east in pretty flat seas. Once on the other side we looked for surface activity but found none. Not what I had hoped for. We looked for a little while and followed some birds diving in a rip. First cast with a 6” white sluggo got us a bluefish that quickly broke us off. Added wire and back in the rip. The all morning we got blues. We just could not get through them. Some other boats next to us where catching keeper bass we could not. Very frustrating. I believe but I am not positive that one of the boats what jigging some cod jig like a diamond jig. The trollers while being a pain for the smaller skiffs were doing pretty well on the bass. Anyway we were catching fish so that was already a success. I was debating about following the second leg of our trip but that place looked just too fishy. As the tide slowed down and the rip died we move slightly south and noticed a lot of birds sitting in the water. By that time the place was also PACKED with boats. Anyway we noticed that the birds were feeding on sand eels while sitting on the water. They were surrounded by zillions of sand eels which were forming a 6’-10’ wide * 150+ yard long highway. Two fly guys were hooked up to stripers. We checked the place for a little while until we realized that everytime we would be in the sand eels the sonar would light up. We soon understood that there were tons of stripers cruising under the eels. After a fruitless attempt with an intermediate line I switched to a sinking line, fluorocarbon leader and 5” DNA sand eel and was very quickly hooked up to a 34” bass that swallowed the fly right at the boat. I saw the all stuff in front of me. It was awesome. From there we kept catching bass on the fly. Mark who had never fished landed a bunch including a 36” striper (I took care of the casting). We had a blast. We almost never moved the all afternoon fishing around that one lobster pot. We apparently did better than most people around us, and guys on the fly appeared to score way more than guys with plastic/metal/wood. I am still amazed at how efficient that fly was. We had packs of bass following the fly. A pause in the retrieve and the biggest of the pack would inhale the fly. My experience has always been the rat being quicker to the fly, not that day. We only got two sub legal the all day. The rest was all keepers in the 33" to 36" class, covered with sea lice. One broke me off, she took the fly with such violence that it broke the leader on the take. Appeared big, maybe it was the elusive 40". Why in **** would a bass pick something fake when there is so much real food around? Regarding the sand eels some were HUGE in the 6" to 7" length and I would bet some were bigger than that. I am adding an inch or two to my flies. Now the one thing that I still can not understand is that we did not catch ONE bass on the weighted 6” white sluggo the all day. I never used them too much but man that should not be rocket science. Tried jigging, zigzagging, all sorts of retrieves. Just nothing!
Any tips? I am posting a few pics. Mark is in orange. Looking pretty good for a first time fisherman, don’t you think?
The wind picked-up around 1530 so we packed and made our way back to Green Harbor, tired but smilling.
I had to warn Mark that a day like this was the exception for the weekend angler not the rule.
06-20-2006, 07:41 AM
Cape Cod Bay East - 6/17/06
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