Cape Cod Fishing Report - November 1, 2018

Pictured above: Pat O’Donnell with a healthy-looking schoolie from the Cape Cod Canal this week.

With Halloween in the rearview, the remaining days of the Cape Cod striper season are numbered. But that doesn’t mean it’s over—at least not yet. Stripers, even keeper-sized fish, are being caught daily around the Cape, in good numbers, and with some big baitfish arriving, there could be one last shot at a cow.

Fishing Report for Cape Cod

John at Eastman’s Sport and Tackle has been seeing breaking fish and diving birds off the South Side of Falmouth this week. He said few fishermen are giving it a shot in the saltwater right now, but that there are still fish to be caught. John hadn’t heard very much about the blackfish bite, probably because it’s been so nasty most of the past few weeks that few boats got out.

I saw some keeper-size blackfish pulled onto the rocks of the Cape Cod Canal on Wednesday, they were larger than many of the stripers that were there blitzing on sea herring.

Not all the bass were small. Jeff at Canal Bait and Tackle said he’d heard of fish to 30 pounds this week. Dan at Red Top reported seeing some big breaks under the birds as well.

Even though most of the stripers are schoolies, they are perfect specimens. Beautifully colored, with blue and purple sheens, fat bellies, and sharp, unbroken stripes. Consider crushing the barbs on your hooks to ensure a healthy release of these small stripers, so we can see them return every year, a little bigger.

On the Vineyard, bonito are gone, the albies have left, and the plague of 1-pound bluefish has ended. The saltwater season on the Vineyard is ending just like it started, with schoolie striped bass on the South Shore of the island. There have been some keepers in the mix, according to the report from Larry’s Tackle Shop.

There were some bluefish reports this week. James at Sports Port had heard of blues caught on Sandy Neck, and at least one 12-pound slammer blue caught in the Cape Cod Canal.

James said beyond the blues and schoolies, the fishing has been quiet. Fishermen trying the structures in Nantucket Sound for tog have been finding lots of seals floating around, but few tautog. Whether the two are connected is up for debate, but I’d have to imagine, a tog would make a pretty easy meal for a hungry gray seal.

Fishing Forecast for Cape Cod

There’s still plenty of bait, which is what we need to keep the fishing going into the eleventh month. Sea herring and mackerel in the Canal are likely to have brought some larger fish with them, but you may have to weed through the schoolies to find them. Fishing at night, or fishing large lures may help cull out the smaller stripers.

For blackfish, Buzzards Bay is your best bet. Look to deeper structures now as the water is starting to cool off a little more quickly now, thanks to some very cold nights recently.

And we can’t forget the freshwater fishing, which is excellent right now. Water temperatures are perfect for trout, with rainbows feeding throughout the day and big browns snapping up baitfish after dark. Bass and pickerel are eating heavily as well, and the smallmouth fishing is very good with jerkbaits and tubes.