Thursday brought back calm seas and fair winds, and fishermen got back out to find the striper and albie fishing improved from last week.
At Canal Bait and Tackle, good fishing was reported in the East End earlier this week. Fish to 40 inches caught during the morning tides.
AJ at Red Top Sporting Goods said fish as large as 40 pounds were caught this week by fishermen using jigs and eels at night. The fishing had tapered off, but he reported that fish were still being caught. The albies that had been buzzing around the Canal seem to be gone with the wind, AJ said.
The wind definitely shifted the albies around some. Evan at Eastman’s Sport and Tackle said the waters off Falmouth and the Elizabeth Islands got a fresh influx of albies this week. The albies I saw this week – key word, “saw” – were staying up for a good period of time, but were still on the picky side.
I’ve seen bait really bunching up since the storm as it starts to move out of the salt ponds. This has led to some improved striper fishing on the South Side. Evan heard of a fishermen who caught a half-dozen bass one night this week on a south-facing Falmouth Beach. Fishermen have also been taking out eels to target larger bass in the dark.
With stripers no longer part of the Martha’s Vineyard Derby, striper fishing effort on the island has been reduced this fall. But, those anglers looking for bass have been rewarded with some large bass recently, reported Julian at Larry’s Tackle. He’d heard of fish as large as 50 inches, along with a few more 20- and 30-pounders, even during the day. Albie fishing, however, has not been as productive. Julian said Vineyard fishermen have been running to the Elizabeth Islands to find consistent albie feeds. There are still some big bonito kicking around. Larry’s weighed in a 12-pounder last Thursday. There was also an 11-pound bonito caught!
Captain Kurt of Fishsticks Charters said wind put a damper on many of his trips this week, but when he did get out he found albies and spanish mackerel along the Elizabeths and bass and blues in the backwaters.
Capt. Peter Fallon of Gillies & Fallon Guide Service is on the hunt to figure out which areas will turn on first after the big blow. These sorts of storms seem to hit the re-set button for albies and it can take a couple of days for patterns to re-emerge. We fished through the weekend and were rewarded with some of the best feeds of the season. A stronger than forecasted SW wind on Wednesday kept us from some of the locations that we wanted to check. There is a ton of bait being swept out of the southside ponds and harbors and the flat between Edgartown and State Beach was loaded with peanut bunker. We haven’t done much the past week in the rips in the sounds, in part due to the winds, but I am expecting that the fish will be filling into these locations that produced well this time last season. Number one tip for folks looking to catch an albie on a fly is think about boat control ahead of everything else. I noticed a lot of boats last week trying to approach pods of breaking fish from down wind. Get up wind, let them come to you, and use some idle reverse to keep your fly caster in touch with their fly.
Bluefish have been running around Buzzards Bay and the Canal. They claimed a couple jigs and eels from me this week, but somehow managed to avoid my hooks. Other fishermen had better luck, catching bluefish as big as 10 pounds.
Tog fishing is firing up, though few fishermen are giving it a shot besides Captain Mel True of Fishnet Charters. He’s been hitting the tog hard this month, and has boated six 10-plus-pounders so far. On Thursday, he had 40 keeper-sized fish up to 8 pounds.
One issue with early-fall togging is the amount of bait-stealers still around, like scup and sea bass. Mel recommended trying a whole small crab, not a cut larger crab, to weed out the little fish.
Fishermen were just getting back to tuna fishing as I wrote this report, so I don’t have any post-storm intel there. The fishing for giants should remain good east of Chatham and around Provincetown, the big question will be where did the smaller, recreational size tuna move to.
Fishing Forecast for Cape Cod
The better striper reports lifted my spirits, as I was worried we were going to be in for an albie or nothing fall run. Seems like the bass fishing is good just about anywhere on the Cape, with schoolies abundant in Cape Cod Bay, Buzzards Bay, and the South Side, with some larger fish roaming around places like the Canal and Martha’s Vineyard. The Outer Cape was churned up by the storm, but those conditions should improve soon, and the fishing should too. There was good fishing out there all summer for schoolie and slot-sized fish, so perhaps the fall will bring some even bigger ones to those beautiful beaches.
Tog fishing isn’t usually on my radar until October, but Captain Mel’s report sounds too good to pass up. Packing along some green crabs on an albie trip could be a good way to swap your picky albie frustrating with some missing tog bites frustration. Tog will be hanging relatively shallow now, as they tend to move deeper as the water cools.
The water temperature around the Cape did drop substantially following the storm, which is probably why the striper fishing picked up. The Harvest Moon is in a week, and that could be the high point of the fall striper fishing.
And, if you’re looking to rinse off the salt, the stocking trucks will be rolling soon, depositing good-sized rainbow trout into the ponds around Cape Cod. Largemouth and smallmouth bass fishing is picking up as these fish ramp up their feeding in response to the falling temperatures.
To you chris, Jimmey, Ron, Kevin, and the rest of the OTW crew , where is your vioce on the commercial fishing travesty. The season is almost over and with the quota being only 50% filled and the canal showing up all but dead,despite the bullshit reports from the tackle shops,you remain totally silent on the situation. I have many canal rat buddies that attest the fishing sucks. All you can produce on your tv series are 2 and 3 year old episodes because you cant find new ones anywhere. You have to rely on cod, haddock, and trout because ther is no filmable striper episodes to be had.USE YOUR VOICE and DO SOMETHING !
Hey dumbass—the top story on the website is called help striped bass survive catch and release, maybe try reading it.
Wow amazing how people don’t look at the data. First off with the tuna stocks doin so welland a result of social media half the guys who have bass permits are doin that the facts are the guys who truly commercial bass fish numbers are steady year after year FACT it’s not like it was where a bio mass settles off Nauset beach and 300 boats fill the quota in 3 weeks now they sag in at night tides moon and the guys that it how to catch um do so now there was 30 boats guys that know how to fish get there number 15 at night in the fog and wind not 300 boats it is work the gravy commercial fishing is over the bio mass is offshore and sags in at night or right conditions Seals etc are a big reason bait offshore is plentiful water temp in bays etc are warm so fish pass through not residential so to sum it up 30 guys that have been gettin there number for years and that’s just one small area of Mass aren’t gonna fill the quota but there number didn’t change Bad Nees left a comment look at the facts all of them not just your personal experience put some effort into it you will catch fish if you go to the same place same time all the time well you get what you get
Thanks Joe Mack, Truth will free us ! Stripers are in serious jeopardy this year!
Don’t see something- then SAY SOMETHING!
You need to find some new canal rat buddies,the canal has been great this year.
i dont kno about great…okay at best..nothing like last year and the year before…its gone down hill the past few years.
Joe Mack is correct. I remember the day when catching schooler striper was embarrassing. Stop catching these because even if you release they have a 70% chance of dying. Read the science behind all of this. Happy Fishing.
the canal has been awful this year ..the worst fishing for bass in 20 years very few big fish even less slot fish and a crap load of schoolies ….i still preach make them a GAME FISH for 5-10 yrs then see how they rebound…OTW should look into a survey/petition about doing so.. you guys def..have a striper following to help get it going…i would like to say thanks to the OTW staff for still giving us a good site,mag. and tv show, thanks for the work you all do and thanks for doing the CUP tourney.. tight lines and hope you and your fams. all stay safe
Joe’s 100% correct – not sure why Mike’s on the defensive – it’s not just about one article, OTW needs to do more – we all need to do more. Again, not sure why this is such a hard sell for so many folks. Maybe Mike’s fine with chasing Perch around a farm pond but for the rest of us, Striper fishing is irreplaceable.
If you guys care sooooo much about striped bass then stop fishing for them …theres plenty of other species to catch ..quit your whining because your part of the problem
I was on the canal this morning up at the east end fish peir…..NOTHING!!!!! (1) schoolie was caught by a sharpie at the mid channel…..something needs to be done or fishing may become a waste of time.
fishing at the canal is a joke may as well set weirs.
If commercial guys only get Monday, Wednesday give the recreational guys Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday. See how the rec guys do.
“To put those percentages in numbers, recreational fishermen are estimated to have caught 41.2 million striped bass in 2017. They kept 2.9 million and released 38.2 million. Of those 38.2 million released, it is estimated that 3.4 million did not survive.” On The Water 2018
That is a hell of a lot more than Commercial Fisherman kill. FACTS
Citation requested. I’m not contesting or challenging this information. On the contrary, I find it very interesting. If you would send me a link to the article, I would like to read it. This is my first year as a commercial striped bass fisherman. I have been doing very well, considering that most of my experience is fishing the canal with jigs…something that I’ve become proficient at. However, I’ve never actively targeted them from a boat…I’d rather spend my recreational day getting my limit of fluke and seabass, instead of taking one 28″ bass…wasting all that fuel in the process. The quote from the article is very enlightening…I would be interested to see the source of OTW data. Thanks for this very interesting information!
https://www.asmfc.org/uploads/file/5cc9ba4eAtlStripedBassStockAssessmentOverview.pdf
From the 2018 benchmark stock assessment – numbers are estimates based on surveys (could never get an actual count of fish caught and released) and of course a small change in the estimated mortality rate of released striped bass (9%) would change numbers drastically.
Contradictory to common knowledge, I have caught most of my tog this year, including spring and now fall, on metals. Ended a few albie trips already with keeper tog slow-jigging epoxies off the bottom waiting for the funny fish to pop back up. I don’t think I’ve ever caught so many tog on jigs as I have this year