Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine Fishing Report 11-10-2011

Friends don’t let friends go too long without catching fish. Alan Sharaf has a few that are determined to keep him off the therapist’s coach. Last Sunday, Captain Jason Colby put Al into the thick of thick-lipped, hard-charging tautog and he left Westport with a bag full of fillets (and a little black and blue from battling blackfish up to 10 pounds). Knowing I couldn’t compete with size but could win with numbers, I invited Al on a smelt hunt. The following day he was a popular guy as more than a few friends and relatives had a smelt supper that night.

It would be hard to imagine two fish as different as tautog and smelt, but they do share similarities. They both can be viewed as rescue buoys for those reeling from withdrawal symptoms caused by the departure of the striper. They also have cult-like followings of fans that wait all year for the frosty weather that brings them within reach. And lastly they are both table fare par excellence – and best of all, you can catch them NOW!

I was talking tog with Pete from Belsan’s in Scituate the other day and I’m flabbergasted that almost no one pursues them on the South Shore. A generation ago many did, it’s probably a case of a new breed of anglers just not knowing how. Above all tautog is a fish of hard and “live” bottom. If you’re not bouncing rocks with your sinker, you’re not likely to find tautog. Scout out a lump or rocks, a reef or wreck between 20 and 35 feet of water, drop anchor and drop a sinker and dropper loop with an impaled green or Asian crab on the line and see what you can scrounge up. While it’s nice to be tight to structure, an active chum slick can make up for sloppy anchoring. As for a green or Asian crab source, a crab pot left off most any dock around with a fish rack in its trappings should be teeming with crabs the next day. Spider crabs are not as good for bait, but they make adequate chum.

If your boat right now looks as if it’s wearing white spandex, then a better move might be to just jump aboard a charter such as the Little Sister in Westport as Captain Colby just this past week has been putting patrons into some wicked white chins to almost 11 pounds. One method that has been gaining flavor with us is jigging for tautog. Some purists might knock tog as strictly a “meat” fishery where artificials play no role – wrong! Mike Dumais and Frank Dalli have been targeting tog with Tidaltails jigs and spinning rods. The Tidaltails jigs come from an obsessed tautog hunter by the name of John Knight who hails from the land of the tog – New Rochelle, New York. I have to admit I was skeptical until I saw “Crazy legs” Dalli doing his patented tog dance with a monster tog that broke his heart and fluorocarbon off cleanly just above the knot. I’m making way for a spinning combo and Tidaltails jigs for the next time I tangle with tautog.

And then there’s smelt. I never thought I’d tape a smelt, but I have and some of them we are encountering this year are as long and almost as stocky as stocked trout! But I can’t think of too many times that two of us have caught 80 stocked trout in a setting! And that has been the case this smelt season. The fishing has been so good that there have been nights that my friend Rick Paone and I have released everything less than 8 inches! The key, and I’ve been preaching this to every tackle shop I know, is having an underwater light source designed to attract fish. These modern fish lights have relegated the traditional kerosene lanterns to anachronism status. There are two marinas in the Boston area that are employing underwater lights from Fishing Lights Etc., and every night we hit the docks they are loaded with smelt. My previous smelt experiences were outings of frustration at best, no more! And the show in the glow of those green lights is like a scene out of Animal Planet as life and death drama takes place under your rod tip as bigger smelt hunt down smaller smelt, which in turn chomp on silversides and grass shrimp. Prowling just below the visual display are tommycod picking off the unwary, and we are seeing volumes of tommycod (AKA frostfish), the likes of which I haven’t seen in years. When a 13-inch plump tommycod hits a Sabiki jigged from a wispy ice-fishing rod with 4-pound line it will even pull drag. After taking my friend Al on Monday night, he feared that his odysseys to the smelt camps in Maine would never be the same. I know that Hull, Quincy, East Boston and Winthrop are hot right now for smelt, but I’m not hearing much about the South Shore or the North Shore. Still I can’t help but wonder how an underwater fishing lights system would fare from a marina in Green Bay, Scituate, Swampscott, Salem or Cape Ann? If just dying to find out and if I do I’ll be sure to pass it on. The only caveat is that you have to have grass shrimp. Don’t worry the least about fresh verses frozen. When he doesn’t have live shrimp on hand, the “Shrimp King” Rick from Fore River Bait and Tackle in Quincy flash freezes shrimp and that is all we are using and they are just fine!

The Massachusetts Bay cod fishing from all accounts is the best in years! And keepers are even being taken from the shore! Boaters are taking them at Farnham Bell, Boston Ledge, the B-Buoy and Halfway Rock on the North Shore. Word is that the take is a mixture of rock cod and white bellies. It must be all those herring and mackerel that are still present and are attracting the deep water cod inshore. When I was at Fore River the other day, Maria who works at the shop told me of a steady bite of keeper cod from Nut Island. I recall a few years back one guy that took some remarkably large cod from Nut Island by dropping a chum bag over the railing here and jigging up fish that came into the scent trail. Boy would I have loved a picture of that!

Castle Island and the entrance at the Sugar Bowl deserve a shot for cod, and I just know that almost anywhere you can gain access to the extensive dockage off the inner harbor at nighttime, chances are good you’ll catch a cod or two this month. Make no mistake nighttime does make a difference in the fall. Clams are good bait, but while seaworms are inconvenient they are better bait. Don’t curse catching a crab on the hook, instead break off opposing legs, stick your hook in one opening and out the other, crack the top of the shell (this is all tog style) and cast that critter out there – cod love crabs almost as much as blackfish do. You might scratch together a few scrod-sized cod from Deer Island, the Lynn Pier and maybe Salem Willows. The Dogbar Jetty in Gloucester is also worth a shot.

If you still have tuna fever, don’t make the mistake of Nat Moody of First Light Anglers in Rowley who made the pivotal error of making a test run on Tuesday without his fishing gear. Naturally he saw several pods of pelagics busting mackerel and sea herring from Nahant to Thachers Island. He also spotted gannets slamming into the surf off Cranes Beach in Ipswich. Could it be a vestige school of stripers pushing herring? Or was it just the bait attracting all that feathery attention?

Almost to prove me wrong when I bemoaned the loss of our linesiders last week, Captain Russ Burgess set his sights on southern Plymouth on Monday. It wasn’t long before he text messaged a photo my way of about a 15-pounder that he took among a pile of blitzing fish by the jetty on the northern side of The Canal. The fish hit a bucktail/pork rind combination.

And then there’s the sweetwater option. Ponds and bogs that had been weed chocked and near impossible to fish have pockets in weeds now where big bass lurk to ambush. Slap on the shades look for those weed breaks and pitch a wacky-style Slug-Go, or how about a good old bobber and shiner combination? The biggest largemouth bass I ever caught was during this time of the year within a five-day span by floating the biggest shiners I could find in pockets in coontails. The first fish was 7 ½ pounds and in the same spot a few days later I caught it’s schoolmate of 6 ¾ pounds. Just about any old pond will harbor hawgs, but I’d consider the cranberry bogs of Norwell or Duxbury, which have received scant angling attention during the summer.

Forgive me for no reports from New Hampshire or Maine, but historically there is little if any angling going on there this time of the year as it seems as if most have taken to hunting. Once there’s first ice, the reports will follow.

Best Bets

Tautog off Westport has just heated up. Trap a mess of crabs, find a lump of rocks in 25 feet of water and see if you can wench in a white chin! If you tinker around the South Shore by Minot’s Light I would be surprised if you didn’t find your own tautog hole. Take along some clams while you are at it, there’s been a surge in cod numbers inshore and from shore. If you’re willing to downsize everything but your appetite, seek out the sizzling-hot smelt bite from Hull through Winthrop and most likely beyond. The bite is at night and a light source surely helps. Sweetwater largemouth bass among cranberry bogs in Norwell is another good option. But true bragging rights go to those who catch a break in the weather and set sail for tuna – while the anglers are few, the pelagics are plenty!