Cape Cod Fishing Report- January 11, 2024

Cape Cod Fishing Report

Another week, another 3-day stretch of gale-force winds. Just like the weather, not much has changed on the fishing front this week. The ponds are still giving up pickerel, bass and trout, but the real challenge has been finding a weather window and developing a pattern. So, this past weekend, I jumped in the car with my buddy Jack with a plan to build a bite and figure out a pattern within our morning weather window.

There was a frigid, windy front coming in Saturday afternoon, so Jack and I packed up my truck early that morning and headed east to an Outer Cape kettle pond for some trout fishing. As it turns out, it was one of the best days of fishing we had all winter. We made a quick stop at Goose Hummock Shops in Orleans for a box of nightcrawlers, a dozen shiners, size 4 Gamakatsu Octopus hooks, spoons, micro-finesse Z-Man plastics and Baker Lures’ suspending jerkbaits. Each of us planned to set up 2 bait rods—one with a worm beneath a bobber, the other with a live shiner on a long leader, with a 3/4-ounce sinker to keep the bait on bottom. If the bait rods weren’t getting bit, we’d cast lures around to pass the time. Jack and I hiked out to our spot and to our surprise, the bait rods were getting bit left and right in no time.

We set up on a shallow, rocky point and after a few minutes, I noticed a curious but hesitant rainbow chasing my spoon all the way in to my feet. A few minutes later, Jack hooked a rainbow on a nightcrawler in shallow to break the skunk early. Even though we found life, it didn’t take long for us to make a move toward some deeper water in search of more, and bigger fish.

After the move, the action picked up quick. Every few minutes a rod was going off, and each fish we brought in helped us decipher a pattern. The rainbows were strictly feeding in shallow. In fact, we didn’t catch a single rainbow from more than 1 foot of water. At times, our worm and bobber rigs would drift in toward the beach as the wind picked up, and suddenly the rainbows would take interest. Six to 12 inches of water was the strike zone. Pretty cool. In one instance, I could even see a rainbow trout swirling near my bobber, so I made a cast with the spoon and hooked up immediately.

On the other hand, brown trout were feeding only in deep water. The shoreline we chose to fish from was shallow, sandy and rocky before dropping off quickly to 10 feet with a grassy bottom. A 3/4-ounce weight kept our shiners on bottom, where brown trout seemed to be waiting, mouths agape, for an easy meal. We’d cast the bait out and before even setting our rods down, the rod tips bounced, indicating brown trout had already taken up interest in the baits. Meanwhile, we kept our heads on a swivel with eyes glued on the bobber setups. More times than I can count, Jack and I sprinted up and down the beach yelling “bobber down!” or “your shiner just got eaten”. Strangely enough, not a single rainbow ate our deep baits that day, just as the brown trout didn’t eat our shallow baits.

But, maybe the coolest part of the day—aside from the 3 bald eagle sightings—was discovering what the brown trout had been eating. When one of the fish came in, it spat up a half-digested cloud of bait. “Wow, they’re eating baby bluegills,” Jack said as we investigated the cluster of dime-sized baitfish. That was an important discovery which gave us some insight as to why our deep shiners were catching browns instead of the deep nightcrawlers we tried.

Since Saturday, developing a bite pattern in the ponds has been tough. It’s hard to catch fish and stay in contact with your lure when the wind puts a parabolic bow in your line with every cast. So, for a change of pace, I touched base with Captain Cam Faria of Cambo Charters who has been running out to the pollock grounds from northern Massachusetts when conditions allow. Much like Jack and I did on Saturday, Cam picked a weather window for Tuesday morning before the wind picked up drastically in the afternoon. I met him in Rockport on the north shore and we steamed 25 miles offshore with his friends Albert and Michael, who is better known by the internet as Tackle 2 the People.

I’ll keep the pollock report brief since this was well north of Cape. We fished 4- to 12-ounce jigs with teasers above them between 190 and 250 feet of water over muddy bottom and caught pollock hand over fist ranging from tinker size to nearly 20 pounds.

I had never caught a pollock before Tuesday, so I was just happy to knock them off my bucket list of species and to be doing some saltwater fishing in early January. To catch some jumbo pollock around 15 pounds was special. Having been out there for the past week or two, Cam, Michael and Albert were dialed in on these fish. They knew where to find them, and in some cases, the pollock were schooled so thick we pulled 3, 4 or 5 fish up at a time on teasers. The big ones gave some nice head shakes and were spitting up full herring at the surface.

Overall, it was a productive week on the water; but during yet another stretch of blustery, wintery conditions, finding those brief weather windows was imperative to building a bite—whether jigging pollock from 200 feet down, or duping rainbow trout into eating a spoon in 6 inches of water.

When I paid a visit to Red Top Sporting Goods in Buzzards Bay to get a quick repair on my surf rod, Connor Swartz filled me in on the local freshwater bite. He said a customer came in yesterday and was ecstatic after crushing largemouth bass on Z-Man chatterbaits on almost every cast at a nearby pond. Considering the wind was honking at a steady 25 knots yesterday, it’s safe to say the bass were chewing hard in the gusty conditions. There’s a reason the old fisherman’s adage “if it’s blowing, we’re going” is still used today. As pleasant as it is to duck out of the wind, some of the best days on the water, fresh or salt, are when it’s blowing like crazy.

Connor also said that trout fishermen are stopping in to pick up PowerBait and shiners pretty routinely, and are presumably having success. But the most surprising info they received this week was from one of their shop regulars who buys shiners at least twice each week. He told Connor he was catching quality smallmouth bass in Mashpee Wakeby Pond on live bait after the snow storm this week. Because smallies tend to school over underwater humps in 20- to 40-foot depths (or more) this time of year, the shiners were most likely being fished on a bottom rig, much like Jack and I fished our shiners for brown trout earlier in the week.

If you prefer to catch smallies on artificials, a ned rig, a blade bait or some other craw imitation crawled along the bottom is a good bet. OTW’s Anthony DeiCicchi and I went out for smallies on the Pelican Bass Raider on Saturday afternoon, but came back to shore skunked and cold. The wind was blowing hard and snow was approaching, so we thought they’d be chewing good, but we ultimately concluded that the fish had a collective case of lockjaw.

Amy at Sports Port Bait and Tackle in Hyannis said the fishing has been slow with the weather we’ve been having. She said that Christian was talking about going for holdovers locally last week but his results remain to be seen. Other than the shellfishing crowd, which is still their primary source of business right now, customers are catching rainbow and brown trout in the local ponds, with the occasional bass fishermen reporting hit or miss fishing for largemouth.

• Want to get in on the bite? Find an OTW-approved Charter Fishing Captain around Cape Cod and the Islands!

Cape Cod Fishing Forecast

More cold weather is on the way; maybe not cold enough to freeze the ponds, but definitely cold enough to put ice on your guides.  If the wind would lay down just a bit, good fishing for trout, bass and pickerel should continue. If you plan to hit the sweetwater this week, try everything. Fish various types of lures, try suspending live bait, try fishing bait on bottom, and always have a Plan B if your first spot is unproductive, or your choice species is uncooperative.

As always, you can try to duck out of the wind by keeping up with the forecast and plotting your fishing spots based on wind direction and speed. It doesn’t always pay off to fish in the wind, but often times the fish seem more inclined to feed when there’s some moving water stirring things up.

Personally, I’d like to catch a striper on Cape before the end of January. It will be a challenge, but that’s what keeps fishing interesting this time of year. Routine trips to the same few trout ponds can grow dull fast, so fish new water, try new techniques, and step out of your comfort zone occasionally.

Wherever you find yourself on the water this week, have fun, be safe, be respectful and fish hard. Thanks for reading!

(If you’d like to contribute to our weekly fishing reports this winter, email me at mhaeffner@onthewater.com with a brief report of your day on the water and what you caught, or message me on Instagram @matthaeffner.)