The stocking trucks have begun making the rounds on Cape Cod, and several ponds received a healthy dose or rainbow trout this week.
AJ at Red Top says he’s well stocked for the next few weeks of trout madness, with a wide variety of trout spoons in stock. Spoons are the first choice of many fishermen on the trout ponds because they can cast them a long way and retrieve them relatively quickly to cover water and find the school. Right after stocking, the trout stay schooled up for a few days before the disperse throughout the pond in smaller groups. Therefore, there tends to be a lot of dead water as the trout move around in one big group. So, choose lures that help you cover water quickly to locate the school.
The other strategy is to bait and wait. For rainbows, look no further than PowerBait, which is a close match to the pellets the trout were fed in the hatchery. If you’d rather use something more natural, a nightcrawler is a great bait, especially after it rains.
Holdover trout are still being caught, with browns to nearly 4 pounds reported to Red Top this week. To improve your odds at hooking one of these, stickbaits or live shiners or chubs will give you an edge.
White perch are schooled up and feeding in brackish waters around the Cape, and are approaching their heaviest weights of the year as they prepare to spawn. Small spoons, jigs, spinners, and live grass shrimp or mummichogs are a lock for catching perch. The challenge in catching white perch is usually in finding the school. Once you do, they aren’t very picky about what they’ll eat.
The pre-spawn pickerel bite is not to be missed, especially if you haven’t been fishing in a while. The smaller, shallower ponds will have the best action right now, but as the weather warms, the larger, deeper ponds will wake up as well.
Largemouth bass fishing should be improving by the day as well. The waters are still cold, so suspending jerkbaits are a great option, and on warm afternoons, a shallow-diving crankbait in a shallow pond can be a good bet.
Fishing Forecast for Cape Cod
It’s been a long (albeit mild) winter, take the easiest option and get after the trout this weekend. You can see exactly which ponds have been stocked at the state’s Trout Stocking Report. They’ll be adding to that list consider