Cape Cod Fishing Report - March 22, 2018

The crew at the Sandwich Hatchery has been hard at word in this ridiculous March weather, plowing out boat ramps to stock the trout around Cape Cod ponds. The first batch of rainbows was delivered last week, with more ponds on the hitlist this week. Hats off to them for helping keep us in the fishing game despite the weekly nor’easter cycle we can’t seem to break.

While the weather and cold has hampered fishing efforts some, I’ve been out scouting many of my favorite bass and pickerel ponds, and across the board, all of them have very high water this year. That’s good news for some of the very shallow, small ponds that are too weed-choked to fish on low-water years. These ponds see very little pressure, but with the wet, snowy weather we’re having, they’ve been topped off and are in prime condition for shallow-diving crankbaits.

I got the kayak out on one of these super-shallow ponds on Monday, and found the pickerel willing, but the bass sluggish. The hits were soft, and I missed most of them, but I landed pickerel to 22 inches and a 1-pound bass.

Elsewhere around the Cape, fishermen caught bass and pickerel on shiners, suspending jerkbaits, and Rat-L-Traps.

Reports of both holdover and just-stocked trout came in as well. Fishermen had luck with the fresh stockies by using Power Bait, live worms, and gold spoons. Holdover trout seem partial to stickbaits like the Rapala X-Rap and the Yo-Zuri Pins Minnow.

Fishing Forecast for Cape Cod

At last, there’s some seasonally appropriate weather in the forecast. By the middle of next week, we’ll be seeing temperatures in the mid-40s, and once the ponds begin to warm a few degrees, you better believe the bass bite is going to turn on in a big way. They have a lot of pre-spawn feasting to catch up on, and they won’t waste any more time in doing it.

The water will still be cold, so suspending jerkbaits will be the best bet on deeper waters. If the fish seem aggressive, switch to a lipless crankbait. In shallow ponds, try a shallow-diving crankbait like the KVD 1.5, Mann’s Baby 1-, or the Bagley Balsa B. Of course, for close to a sure thing, fish shiners below a float.

And you can stay on top of where the stocking trucks are rolling, by checking the Massachusetts Trout Stocking Report, which tells you not only where, but what species of trout have been stocked.