We had a brief slip back into winter earlier this week, but spring weather, and the official start of spring, are coming in the next week.
Sunday brought the best bass fishing action of the year so far for me. The incoming weather and dropping pressure had the largemouths feasting on some of the smaller bog ponds. In nasty weather in the spring time, I like lipless crankbaits – I think of them as the freshwater equivalent to bucktail jigs in stormy surf. I had a quantity over quality type of outing, casting a Rat-L-Trap from shore. Anthony DeiCicchi had a good day on Sunday as well, losing track of the number of bass he caught, and using a wide variety of lures to catch them including jerkbaits, jigs, and large swimbaits. His biggest bass was shy of 3 pounds.
The next month and a half will be prime time for catching a new personal best largemouth bass, as these fish get more and more aggressive as the water warms and they approach spawning time.
Pickerel are also biting well. I had several on the float-and-fly over the weekend, and Thursday at mid-day, Andrew Burke managed a few on a Ned Rig.
The Sandwich Hatchery crew continues to make the rounds, and some ponds have already received their second batch of trout this week. According to the MA Stocking report, most of the fish being planted this week have been rainbows, and in some of the ponds, they are joining brook trout that were stocked last week.
We hit a Falmouth pond at lunchtime Wednesday and had a mix of rainbows and brookies, but with it being mid-day, and a bright sun overhead, the fish were picky. OTW Publisher Chris Megan caught the most fish by a wide margin retrieving a Rough Rider spoon slowly, almost bumping bottom with it. Earlier or later in the day, the trout might have been more active and aggressive. Evenings have always been my favorite time to target spring trout, but I was on the hook for St. Patrick’s festivities with the family instead of fishing.
I did fish Thursday mid-day for bass, and found the fishing slow. I think the bass may take a day or two more to recover from that cold snap, which plunged temperatures into the teens on Monday and Tuesday. The weekend and early next week are looking prime. I’ll be focused on hunting a a heavy largemouth bass with big baits and lures from then until mid-April.
Saltwater fishing is slow, though I’ve heard reports of white perch perking up in some estuaries, and some holdover stripers stirring. Tog season opens in about two weeks, though it might be closer to a month before we can expect consistent action with blackfish.
If you, like me, start your Cape saltwater season targeting tog, you might enjoy our most recent episode of On The Water TV, which we filmed last October on Buzzards Bay. Kevin Blinkoff and I tried out the new Old Town Sportsman Autopilot kayaks while looking for keeper blackfish.
Fishing Forecast for Cape Cod
Trout fishing is pretty reliable right now, and since the state updates the list of stocked ponds on a daily basis, you check to see exactly when you’re favorite pond got its latest batch of trout. Spoons are working well, as are small tube jigs, but the fresh-stocked trout, especially the rainbows, can’t seem to resist PowerBait. My favorite color has always been yellow.
While I make a point of trout fishing at least once a week this time of year, the possibility of hooking a super-sized largemouth is too great to ignore. Looking at the forecast, I think the largemouth fishing is about to break wide open over the next week. The smaller, shallow ponds will be the first to have good fishing, with the larger, deeper ponds, which will be slower to warm up, getting good a little bit later. There are so many good bass ponds on the Cape, too. From what I’ve learned bass fishing around here, it doesn’t take a very big pond to grow a very big bass.
What size outboard is allowed in peters pond The mass pond map does not indicate