Bluefish In The Snow

I was to meet my long-time fishing partner, Bob Small, in Middleboro, where we would share a ride to South Cape Beach in Mashpee for one last time in the 1985 season. South Cape once held a thriving mobile fishing community, not unlike the ones at Race Point and Nauset beaches, where fishermen with 4X4 vehicles could drive on the sand in their hunt for fish. We left the house at 7 a.m. and stopped at the Weweantic River in Wareham to find bait. This river was a great place to catch fresh menhaden (or “crunchies” as we often called them) that we could use as choice cut baits. We managed to snag two before we called it quits. The day before, my sons David and Bill had no trouble snagging a day’s supply of bait, but the weather changed overnight, bringing gusty winds and lower temperatures, scattering the menhaden. My sons had given us what they had left over from the previous day’s fishing, and we continued our journey to Mashpee.

Bluefish had stopped taking topwater plugs in early November—more than two weeks prior—so bait was our only hope of catching before the last of the fish migrated back to warmer waters. Some seasons, we used live eels rather than any other bait because striped bass also liked them, but in the late fall of 1985, the blues wanted only fresh-cut menhaden or mackerel.

We purchased mackerel at the local fish market since our stop at a tackle shop was fruitless. We got one whole fish and several heads from fish the market had already cleaned.

As we went over the Bourne Bridge, we could feel it shaking in the howling north wind. Fortunately, on the south-facing beach, those winds would be blowing from behind us, lifting our casts a little further into Vineyard Sound.

We flushed a covey of quail as we headed down the sand-covered road to the beach. South Cape Beach consists of two beaches, the town beach and the state beach. The town parking lot was paved, while the states beach lot was hard-packed sand.

Bluefish had been at South Cape since the second week of April, making 1985 an exceptionally good fishing year. The spring, summer, and fall fishing had been exciting, and many new fishermen were introduced to the savagery of the bluefish. As we parked, I was still picking broken bluefish teeth out of one of my fingers that had slipped into the jaw of a 16-pound blue earlier in the fall.

Basing our decision on my sons’ good fortunes the previous day, we decided to set up on the state beach. Bob and I made the short walk and found another fisherman set up in the hotspot. He’d watched my sons do a job on the fish the day before and got there early to claim the spot for himself. We set up to his right and counted more than 25 rods dead-sticked along the edge of the water. We made our usual introductions to the angler and his wife who, after a short while, went back to their car to seek shelter from the wind. As a result, she missed seeing her husband catch the first bluefish of the day, an 18-pounder.

Bob’s girlfriend, Ilo, showed up shortly after and set her rod in between the custom rod holders that Bob and I had designed and developed. It was good timing since Bob was the next one to have a rod go down. I set the hook (because Bob was down the beach talking with Ilo) and yelled for him to come and play the fish. I was struggling to keep pressure on the running bluefish since I was still recovering from recent internal surgery.
Bob landed his fish, a fat 12-pounder, that we gave to a fisherman to our right who had fished for two days without a strike and was about to leave fishless.

A short while later, Ilo walked to the parking lot to get our lunches, and right after she left, the strike from another bluefish pulled her rod tip down until it nearly kissed the ground. Bob took the rod from the holder and battled another fat 12-pounder. She just smiled when we told her, “You should have been here,” after she returned with lunch.

The sun hid behind heavy storm clouds as the wind continued to intensify. We noted that we were the only anglers left braving the increasingly poor elements – the others had either gone home or were warming up in their cars. Accustomed to cold-weather surfcasting, we had on our insulated cod-fishing clothes and were comfortable. We were also prepared to fish in the worsening conditions, employing 6-ounce storm weights (which we often used at Race Point) to hold our baits in place.

Bluefish stayed in the warm Vineyard Sound waters well beyond Thanksgiving in previous years, and 1985 was no exception. Bluefish were caught on South Cape into mid-December that year. However, it takes considerable patience when fishing for choppers late in the year. Bob hooked and caught one more fish before we headed home at dark. I did not get one hit all day, but that was fine with me.

The conversation on the ride back to Middleboro was about the weather. It began to rain, and the winds increased upon our arrival at Ilo’s house to unpack. We remarked that it was cold enough to snow and, sure enough, as I headed back to Randolph, it did. We had caught smelt, cod, striped bass, pollock, and silver hake in the snow, so if we’d stayed a little longer, we might have caught our bluefish in the snow.