I’m calling it. Albie season is over. The last albie I hooked was about half the alphabet of Tropical Storm names back. They popped up here and there through Columbus Day weekend, but no one I talked to this week had seen any.
Though no one mentioned them specifically, I have several shortened eels to attest to the presence of bluefish around the Cape still. I was lamenting eel-eating blues to a friend who said, “It figures the blues are here now, being a pain, but are nowhere to be seen in May when we actually want to catch them.”
Of course, I’m not exactly catching them now, just feeding them the back halves of my eels.
The only stripers I fed eels to this week were small, 24 inches and smaller. But according to Frank at Maco’s Bait and Tackle, some of the Canal’s top casters continue to catch good fish on the slimy baits. He said the nighttime hours are key and the stretch from the Herring Run to Scusset Beach has been best.
Jacob at Red Top heard of bass to 20 pounds in the Canal this week, but said the larger bass have been hugging the bottom. Smaller schoolies have been seen on top, but not in the numbers you’d expect for late October. Usually, the week leading up to Halloween sees massive numbers of small bass in the Canal, but that doesn’t seem to be the case just yet. The new moon is on October 27, so perhaps that action will pick up with the strength of the tides over the next few days.
The tuna bite is still going strong. Captain John of Fish Chatham Charters has continued to catch a mix of large recreational size and giant tuna east of Chatham. He was out there Sunday when the entire fleet was covered up by porbeagle sharks. The sharks were hitting jigs, in addition to live baits, and many fishermen tangled with the sharks on spinning gear. John had a client fight a 400-pounder on a jig for more than an hour before bringing it to the boat.
For the inshore crowd, tog are the hottest thing going right now. Macos can hardly keep their green crabs in stock as fishermen load up to hit the rocky structures throughout Buzzards Bay. Captain Matt from Fishy Business Sportfishing reported an excellent day of togging this week, catching a 6-man limit (which is 5 fish apiece right now) with several in the 7- to 10-pound neighborhood.
The top tog I heard of this week was the 12-pounder caught with Captain Kurt of Fishsticks Charters. Kurt has been running more charters for tog in recent weeks than for the “Derby Species” of stripers, bonito, bluefish, and albies. A lot of that is because the tog fishing has been much better.
Trout fishing is excellent right now. Rainbows are biting well in the daytime, and after dark, brown trout have been prowling the shallows of the Cape’s Kettle Ponds. Stickbaits like the Jointed Rapala are an excellent choice for the nighttime browns. Wake them slowly across the surface and set the hook when you feel the bite, not when you hear it.
Largemouth bass are feeding heavily as well. The bass are still very active, and will strike fast-moving baits like lipless cranks and spinnerbaits. Even topwaters are still working.
Fishing Forecast for Cape Cod
The new moon on Sunday could bring a wave of better bass past the Cape, so it’s worth keeping your striper gear ready. Even if the big bass don’t show, schoolies will continue to feed around the harbors and South Side, and even the Outer Cape and Cape Cod Bay. When fishing for schoolies with lighter tackle, do the fish a favor and crush those barbs and use inline single hooks on your plugs. You won’t miss many extra fish, and you’ll be helping ensure those schoolies survive to grow into cows.
Freshwater is good and getting better, so you’d be wise to hit the ponds this weekend. Some very large largemouths will be caught between now and December, and the biggest browns of the season (unless of course we get fishable ice) will be caught over the next couple weeks.
Thank you for suggesting to flatten the barbs, we have been doing this for years and it makes releasing schoolies much easier.