There’s no significant ice-making weather in sight. So, for now, fishermen will have to content themselves with open water fishing for trout, pickerel, and bass.
I fished the kettle ponds on New Years Day and caught a few rainbow trout with a bonus brown. Other anglers reported similar success, using both live shiners and lures like stickbaits or tube jigs.
White perch are schooled up and feeding in brackish waters around the Cape (Eddy Stahowiak caught his first of the year at lunch on Thursday), and some holdovers are surely hunkered down in some of the bays and rivers. There may be some mackerel in the East End of the Canal, along with some small harbor pollock, for the fishermen willing to go out and toss around a Sabiki rig.
In the meantime, we’ll be thinking warm thoughts, getting out for trout, and keeping an eye on the Rhode Island headboat cod reports, and getting ready for the 2020 fishing season.
Fishing Forecast for Cape Cod
As the temperature fluctuates, the fishing will too. Warmer days will fire up the trout fishing, especially in the afternoons. Use lures you can retrieve slowly and keep off the bottom, like tube and maribou jigs, stickbaits, and lighter spoons.
Pickerel will continue to bite well, but the November and early December feeding frenzy will be winding down. There will be slow periods between windows of intense feeding, so on some days, you’ll just have to wait out the bite. Incoming weather will put bass, pickerel, and trout on the feed, in the same way that an approaching storm fires up the striped bass bite.
Could you tell me which brackish ponds currently hold white perch? I live in East Falmouth. Thanks!
Hey Richard.
A good place to try is Oyster Pond off of Surf Drive.