With the new fishing season off to a cold and stormy start, devoted Cape Cod anglers are wondering what, if any, fishing can they do to ring in the New Year.

Though Friday looks like a good day to stay in and read the super-sized January issue of On The Water magazine, Sunday temperatures will be in the 40s, making it a great day to get out and catch fish against a snowy white backdrop.

Trout and stripers headlined the first reports of 2014.

We weren’t long into the New Year before one fly-fishermen plucked a small striper from a Cape Cod backwater. Mike DeSisto was taking part in his January 1 tradition of targeting holdover stripers, and connected with a hungry schoolie before 8 am on New Years Day. This was less than 18 hours after a couple anglers on Nantucket caught the last Cape Cod striper of the year while fishing a salt pond on the island. So it’s safe to say the holdover bass are stirring on the Cape. Small jigs or flies will tempt these bass—just remember to keep the retrieve speed slow.

I caught my very first fish of 2014 on Wednesday afternoon. I was wading around Peter’s Pond looking to catch a January 1 fish, and after missing three bites on spoons, I finally got a solid hookset on a 16-inch rainbow trout with a Yo-Zuri Pins Minnow. I caught one more slightly smaller trout before cold hands and leaky waders sent me running back to the car.

Dan from The Hook Up in Orleans connected with his first fish of the year by catching rainbow trout out of Sheep Pond. He’d checked in at Cliff earlier in the week and found open water and plenty of rising trout, but just one taker—a big 21-inch rainbow.

Kevin at Falmouth Bait and Tackle said the rainbows of Mashpee Wakeby are biting well for fishermen trolling small lures. Browns, however, have been a bit tougher to come by. The winner of the Falmouth Bait and Tackle Trout Derby, which concluded on December 31, was only a 2.4-pound trout. Hopefully the big trout will start biting in the New Year.

The winter bass fishing has been okay in the lakes with open water. Large ponds like Mashpee-Wakeby often hold good coldwater smallmouth fishing as the bass school up in big numbers and take dropshot rigs and blade baits. Last weekend’s warm spell scattered the smallmouths a bit, but Kevin expects the coming cold to concentrate the smallmouths in their winter hideouts once again.

Though skim ice is covering most smaller Cape ponds, none that I know of have ice thick enough (4 inches) to consider fishing on. Besides warmth and rain, the other enemy of ice fishermen is wind, as it churns up the surface of the ponds, keeping ice from forming. While we don have some frigid temperatures on tap on Friday into Saturday, by Monday, the temperature will be close to 50 and there is rain in the forecast. All in all, it’s looking like a no-go for hardwater fishing on Cape this year.

If you’re willing to take a ride, check out the RI/CT or ME/ NH/MA Forecasts for intel on ice fishing possibilities to our North and West.

Best Bets for the Weekend

Get your shovels ready for Friday and your rods ready for Sunday. Trout fishing is good, and most larger trout ponds have open water. Stickbaits and spoons are a good bet, so are shiners and night crawlers. For stripers, check the upper reaches of the Capes rivers, creeks and salt ponds. Small jigs or swimming plugs fished slowly are your best bet.