With a long weekend ahead, you’d be cheating yourself if you didn’t do some fishing. Unfortunately, this week’s digging for fishing intel didn’t turn up too much because few anglers are fishing. In all fairness, the weather hasn’t been too accommodating this week from Sunday’s bitter cold to Wednesday’s wind and rain. Starting Friday, there will be manageable winds and cold, but not freezing, temperatures. You better believe the freshwater fish of the Cape will be having a little Thanksgiving feast for themselves.

Smallmouths are biting in the deeper, clear ponds. Christian at Falmouth Bait and Tackle recommended Jenkins, Peters and Ashumet as go-to places for the bronzebacks. Johns Pond, Long Pond in Harwich and Mashpee-Wakeby also have good populations of smallies that will happily attack a jig.

Santuit is fishing well for largemouths according to Tom at Red Top Sporting Goods in Buzzards Bay. Though this is one of the shallower ponds on Cape, that usually means the largemouth fishing remains pretty good as these fish have no deep water to hide in, making it easier for anglers to get lures in front on them. Though coldwater largemouths often need some coaxing in order to get them to bite. Suspending jerkbaits with long pauses and wacky-rigged Senkos often do the trick for bass in cold, shallow water. A shallow-diving crankbait fished with a slow retrieve is another excellent choice.

This time of year, trout are the main event, however. Dan at The Hook Up in Orleans reported good trout fishing this week at Crystal Lake. A pair of happy anglers caught more than a dozen brown trout while fishing PowerBait. Plenty of 1- to 2-pound rainbow trout are being caught in all of the ponds that received a fall stocking. PowerBait is working well for these colorful trout, but so are live shiners, night crawlers and artificial lures and flies. Spoons are the most popular lures since they cast a long way and cover lots of water—a big plus when hunting cruising trout—but stickbaits often draw strikes from more finicky fish as they can be fished with a slower retrieve, broken up by pauses. Productive flies this time of year include hare’s ear nymphs, wooly buggers and other baitfish-imitating streamers.

No word on saltwater this week, with the exception of some mackerel milling around Cape Cod Bay.

Best Bets for the Weekend

After Thanksgiving Dinner, hit the freshwater hard. Some ponds on Cape already saw a skim of ice on Sunday morning, so if you want a freshwater fix, better get it in soon. Hit the trout ponds for reliable action, deeper ponds for a bronzeback battle and some shallow swims for a late-fall largemouth.