A Stressful Jog in the Fog (Barnstable Harbor Report)

This past Saturday, Ryan Bibeau, myself and Chris Parisi took the 17′ Allied Sportsman out of Barnstable Harbor in search of keeper stripers that had been reported in the area. We had read that there would be a chance of fog and thunderstorms but the thought of starting off the weekend with some good sized bass was too hard to resist.

After getting through the eastern end of Barnstable Harbor with ease, we turned north to enter the channel and were immediately blasted with a thick wall of fog. I’d guess we had 70 feet visibility at best. Being my first time at the helm in foggy conditions, my hands were glued to the wheel with the throttle just barely above idle. The lack of visibility made it tough to find the action, so we killed the engine and tried to listen for birds and bass. Unfortunately, we were only able to hear noise from land and the occasional engine buzzing by. With no electronics on board, it made more sense to cut back in towards the harbor where we’d have better visibility.

As we started back in towards the harbor, we saw some breaking fish on the flats. We eased close enough to land our lures on shore and drag them back into the water. Even though the fish were breaking and clearly hungry, they were focused solely on small silversides and we had a very difficult time getting them to cooperate. I caught one schoolie on a Tsunami Swim Shad and Chris reeled in two on the fly. A few fly fishermen were fishing from shore and seemed to have a bent rod every time I looked over. They were all small fish, but it was much more enjoyable catching schoolies than squinting through the fog to avoid boat traffic in the channel.

Once the fog began to clear, we moved back towards the channel and discovered a parking lot of boats hooked up on the keeper-sized bass we were in search of. The three of us immediately starting throwing every lure we had without success. After a closer look, we realized many other boats were using chunked or live mackerel. Without live bait on board ourselves, we tried to mimic mackerel as best we could but were unsuccessful. Frustrated, we buzzed back in and bought a package of macks at Barnstable Harbor.

Worried that we’d miss out on the bite, we moved quickly and got back out to the channel just in time. On the first drop, Ryan and I both hooked up with some keeper size stripers, one 20-pounder and one in the 12 to 15-pound class. After a few high fives and pictures, we dropped our lines in again, only to realize that the tide was changing and the bite was turning off. They seemed to have been most active right at the end of the tide. We ran some drifts for about another hour but with minimal success, we decided to call it a morning.

After learning how to deal with fog, catching some fish on the fly, taking two really nice keeper-sized fish and still getting in by noon, I chalked up this past Saturday morning on Barnstable Harbor as an all-around success.