Cape Cod Fishing Report - September 1, 2016

thanks for the info kyle ….im sure the place will be packed all weekend long ….2 nights ago i was in that area with eels and caught the evening slack high and nothing for 3 hours and everyone said the same so me and my buddy packed up and went to plymouth jetty and there was loads of bait fish on the surface and at least 15 people fishing off the jetty and not one person said they got a thing and it was surprising due to the fact of so much bait fish ….hopefully this fall brings some luck . My friend just texted me and was fishing that area around the power plant last night up to midnight without a single hit .

Tons of Black Sea Bass in the Sound. Too bad the State closed the season for the year. Rhode Island just increased their Sea Bass limit from 3 fish to 7 fish per angler per day. If both states follow the ASMFC management plan why does one close and the other more than double their limit?

I have a bit of a unique perspective (long)… Missionbell is 1.5 miles east of the Race Point parking lot, overlooks the Peaked Hill bars, and happens to be my family’s summer place. Having spent summers watching (and fishing) the surf out there for nearly 50 years, I think I have a pretty good handle on the changes in fishing and other wildlife there. I also have a BS and MS in wildlife biology from UMass and Clemson, so I’m no hack at wildlife observation.
Seals have caused a dramatic change in the presence of gamefish on the outer cape. Period. During the early 1990’s (a couple years after a big pulse in breeding), one could walk along the shore and see schools of 30″ bass milling about in the shallows. They were there all day, and could be caught with a fresh sand eel on a single hook, tossed out 15′ from shore (would not hit plugs nor anything with a leader). When the beach (having been closed for the nesting birds) reopened, the fish would vanish out of the waves, but would still be present within casting distance. Night fishing with eels or jointed Rebels in the surf would net you 50+ fish from the 28″ to 34″ range (36″ limit), and regularly, larger fish could be encountered. Bass started showing up in landings off boats fishing within 3/4 of a mile of shore during the day.
In terms of blues, at any point during the day you had a pretty good chance of tagging into the scattered small schools that could easily be found in the shallows throughout the day, every day. There was the occasional (at least weekly) hour to half-day blitz, where you could sometimes see them in the waves. If you waded out onto any perpendicular sandbar and tossed a Hopkins or Kastmaster, you would tag into 8 to 15 pounders, any time. Meanwhile, the fishermen on the boats could easily be seen taking blues and stripers as the 90’s wore on and all through the 2000’s.
THEN THE SEALS CAME!
During the 1990’s, they became a daily visitor to the surf in front of Missionbell. Around 2000, they were there by the dozens, and hundreds passed each day during the 2010 to 2015 period. The skulls of stripers and blues (mostly stripers) showed up in increasing numbers on the shore (50+ counted during some beach walks). Surf casting for blues could no longer be counted on on a daily basis, and when they did show up, a seal would (and still do) chase them out after a couple minutes. Stripers vanished from the surf almost entirely, both during the day and night.
This is a very simple correlation that does point to causation. Sure fish populations fluctuate, but when the surf fishery vanishes while the boats (as close as 1/3 mile offshore) continue to land fish at the same rate (or better) than during the surf fishing “heydays” of the 70’s 80’s and early 90’s, and when commercial netters like the Sea Wolf continue to be successful in loading up on bluefish, it’s pretty obvious what has happened. Seals, which often hug the surf as they move throughout the outer cape, have either eaten or chased the gamefish from along the shore. The behavior of the fish has changed, just the way the behavior of the seals have changed in relation to their new predator (which I have also seen from the front porch of Missionbell). Seals are hugging the breakers even closer as they move now, and don’t tend to mill about as they did in the early 2000’s to 2010. The ecosystem has changed back toward what it was before we got rid of seals, and now Orca are showing up to spin things in an even more interesting direction. It’s change. deal with it.
Finally, this year has shown even more change. The seals stopped showing up during the day, with some days going by with only 3 or so seen, and no large packs moving along the shore at dusk. Bluefishing has been much better this summer, with some more extended bites occurring, and no fish taken off lines! Schoolie stripers have also shown up in the waves again, with several 12″ fish being taken during the day – this suggesting hopeful night fishing sojourns. However, those night walks down the beach that would normally produce no seals (but also no stripers over the last 10 years) have produced dozens or hundreds of seals, streaming by! Have the seals using Race Point changed their behavior in relation to the sharks? Probably – none during the day, but hundreds moving during the night. The fish have changed their behavior in relation to the seals’.
Are seals to blame for declines in gamefish? It depends on the context. Along the surf, YES! You would be insane to say otherwise. Have the populations changed overall due to seals, almost certainly not!
I don’t seem to remember so many inshore tuna back in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s either.

Making my first trip to Cape 9/7! Any spots you could help a Fly Fisherman connect? I,m from PA & coming in blind, little experience.All my Striper Fishing was in Maine. Thanks, D.

Save those big old funky wales, but shoot them seals.

I’ll second Paul Champlin’s comments and add mine as a professional wildlife biologist with over 30 years of experience. I’ll sum it up by saying, unequivocally, that the once great surf fishing for stripers on Cape Cod has been decimated by gray seals. Feel free to disagree, but please present a cogent argument to the contrary.

Seals have become an “Environmental invader” … a scourge that persists due to the uniformed and unwilling to see what is plainly before them (including the government biologists and wildlife managers). Just do some research on seal populations in Europe in the 1980’s that were allowed to grow well beyond the carrying capacity in the area that they concentrated. Thousands of harbor seals died of phocine distemper virus (PDV) a horrible, lingering death. Tell that to your friends that think we should just leave them be and let them completely take over the surf. Better yet, remind the NMF and USFWS of the tens of thousands of seals that died from PDV in Europe. Then watch the carcasses of thousands of seals wash up on the beaches of Cape Cod and let them see the folly of their ways. The seals don’t deserve such a horrible fate and neither do the people who love the Cape Cod beaches.

Something needs to be done and that something is amending the Marine Mammal Protection Act to allow for a harvest of many (thousands) of gray seals. I think it is wonderful to have both the great white sharks and orcas “back in town” to dine on seals, but in reality, they could never even put a dent in the seal population. We need to hunt them and hunt them by the thousands or perhaps tens of thousands. Nothing else will do.