Cape Cod Fishing Report
Who turned the fan back on? The wind and rain has been brutal this week, which has made fishing challenging even in the smaller ponds. There is a silver lining though.
It’s the first week of March, temperatures are slowly climbing, and earlier this week, trout stocking began in some of the kettle ponds on Cape Cod. The state has been working closely with the fish hatcheries to load up the ponds even through the rain and wind. But, as expected, the fishing has not been lights out just yet. Once stocked, trout tend to stay in schools, packed close together like they were in the hatchery pools. After a couple days in their new environment, they’re slightly more adjusted and will begin to spread out in search of food. If you stumble upon the stocking truck in action, you’ll surely land a few, but the bite generally improves after the fish have a few days to acclimate to open water.
Brandon Robinson, who I met a few weeks back while pollock fishing on the American Classic out of Lynn, has been cashing in on the trout bite already. He caught a couple rainbow and brown trout while trolling earlier this week right after the first few ponds were stocked, but not as many fish or as large as he’d hoped. He is expecting the bite to improve over the next couple of weeks as water temperatures approach that 48- to 50-degree window.
» Trout Stocking Report: Click here to check out which ponds have been stocked in your area
On the other hand, there’s been a noticeable uptick in largemouth bass activity through these mild temps. I only caught a couple little dinks from a bog pond earlier this week, and went fishless on my first nighttime wake bait mission of the season— but that’s okay. It was more of a scouting mission, and most of the night, I was listening for peepers instead of focusing on my lure. A few years ago, I learned from Anthony DeiCicchi that once you start hearing those small, loud frogs chirping beginning at dusk, it’s usually a sign that conditions are mild enough to tie into a couple bass at night. More to come on that in the next couple weeks.
Anthony did manage to stick a handful of pickerel while fishing with his son on the Bass Raider on an Outer Cape pond over the weekend. Meanwhile, I was busy down at the Atlantic City Boat Show. Unfortunately, their outing was dominated by pickerel and cut short by rain, but they got one solid largemouth in the boat on a Shimano World Minnow—a top tier suspending jerkbait—to top off their pickerel bite.
Jimmy Fee also got out on the bass ponds last weekend with his classic float-and-fly rig, which yielded him a few decent largemouth bass. However, he did say that the takes from the bass were very subtle and that the fish were barely grabbing the hair jig beneath his bobber.
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While a finesse tactic like the float-and-fly rig is a great way to trick finicky fish, bass have already proven their willingness to eat small-ish swimbaits on a slow retrieve in late winter (as we saw in last week’s report). As we transition into spring bass fishing patterns, larger baits will not go unnoticed, so if you’re not getting bit with finesse rigs and techniques, don’t hesitate to boost the size of your offering or increase your retrieve speed a tad. Nate Medeiros, a local surfcaster and bass fisherman I met during the fall run a couple seasons back, has been throwing his own ghand-made XL glide baits and swimbaits around for swim tests, and he tied into an overzealous largemouth today while the wind was honking at 30 mph.
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Just goes to show that throwing big baits in early March doesn’t always lead to a skunk. Bass fishing will only improve from here.
And Jimmy Fee also managed to stick a quality chain pickerel on a 3-inch paddletail while he was bass fishing over the weekend. If the bass just won’t cooperate, you can (almost) always count on pickerel to beat the skunk, and the big ones put up a great fight on light bass tackle. I have yet to connect with a pin-worthy pickerel this season, but if there was ever a time to do it, the prime window is during the months of March and April.
With trout readily available, and pickerel, largemouth, and even smallmouth bass slowly transitioning into shallower water and coming out of their lethargic winter patterns, there are plenty of freshwater options to tide us over until stripers return to the Cape and Islands in mid to late April.
Ian Lumsden at Red Top Sporting Goods in Buzzards Bay said trout fishing is the main draw right now. They’ve had a bunch of customers coming in to pick up bait and they’ve been doing well with rainbows and brookies since stocking began on Monday. Most of the action has been reserved to PowerBait, as the fish are pellet fed until they are released into the ponds, but a few guys are catching on nightcrawlers and shiners as well. However, if you have a kayak or a Jon boat, you can locate schools of recently stocked trout with electronics, and troll around the schools with spoons or Rapalas like Brandon Robinson did earlier in the report. Ian also mentioned that the shop just got in some more freshwater gear, along with Mustad inline single hooks for anyone who still needs to do some terminal tackle swapping before the saltwater season. He noted that they also received 3-ounce jitterbugs; smaller jitterbugs are largemouth killers, especially when crept across glass-calm ponds at night. But, he also mentioned using it for schoolies in the backwaters or larger bass in boulder fields, which, of course, would probably require swapping out hooks for something more striper sturdy. Hey, it’s a lure that most stripers have probably never seen, so why not get experimental? Swing by the shop for your freshwater and saltwater needs this weekend.
Evan at Eastman’s Sport and Tackle in Falmouth was closed last weekend for the Castafari seminar but he reopened doors this week and has anything you need for trout fishing, including PowerBait, spoons, spinners, shiners and nightcrawlers. At the time of this writing, the Falmouth ponds are yet to be stocked, but nearby ponds in Mashpee and Sandwich have already been loaded up with rainbow and brook trout, so it’s only a matter of time before the fishing lights up at your neighborhood honey hole. Stop by this weekend for bait and check out the selection of artificials, or, pick up some shellfishing gear, as clamming has been very good recently with the stormy weather kicking things up.
Lee at Riverview Bait and Tackle in South Yarmouth said his customers have been doing well with tiger trout and rainbows in the ponds around Marstons Mills, casting artificials and using baited rigs. The fishing is only going to improve as the rest of the Cape’s ponds get stocked, so if you’re hitting the outer or lower Cape, stop in on the way to the pond for fresh bait or to re-up on your favorite trout lures.
Morgan at Sports Port Bait and Tackle in Hyannis reported some great action on the kettle ponds this week. She said Amy had a few local come in after trout fishing, and one customer, Phil, had been catching brookies on gold spinners. Most customers are buying trout and bass gear this week, which is refreshing to see after a quiet winter, and most of them were heading to the ponds in Marstons Mills, where Morgan got into some perch using worms. She also fished swim shads slowly on bottom hoping for a couple of bass, but with no luck yet. In the larger ponds like Shubaels and Hamblin, the bass bite will take just a bit longer to heat up. The water still has some warming up to do before they’re in shallow enough to target strictly from shore.
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Cape Cod Fishing Forecast
I’d like to say the immediate future is bright, but the weather forecast says otherwise. More wind and rain is on the way, and that’s not to say fishing will be bad this week, just unpleasant conditions. I hope you’re alright with getting a little wet, or at least spending a little more time covering water to find productive areas. Wind blown coves are a great place to look for recently stocked trout, and the same goes for largemouth bass and pickerel. The water in some of the smaller bass ponds will likely be stained for some time, so opt for noisy, bright-colored baits when you can if you want your offering to get noticed.
At this time of year, the greater your arsenal of bass lures, the better off you’ll be. It won’t hurt to carry jerkbaits, crankbaits, various soft plastics (i.e. paddletails and ned rigs), swimbaits, and larger glidebaits or wakebaits.
The same goes for trout fishing. You don’t want to be down at the pond relentlessly casting spoons and spinners only to find out everyone around you is catching on PowerBait that you left at home—or vice versa. Keep a wide selection of lures and baits handy so you can dial in a bite without having to backtrack to the tackle shop.
The weather doesn’t look like it will really cooperate until Wednesday of next week, but don’t let it deter you from getting on the water for a couple hours.
If there’s one thing I’d really like to do this week (besides stick a 5-pound largemouth), it’s jigging for early-season pollock in the east end of the Canal. A few weeks back they were there feeding on either mackerel or herring, but the bite was short-lived. The spring pollock, from what I understand, are usually very small and are often caught on Sabiki rigs around mid to late March, but it’d be fun to get a small taste of surfcasting before the stripers arrive. Not to mention, it’d be cool to add pollock to my list of shore-caught species.
Wherever fishing finds you this week, stay safe, fish hard, and have fun. Thanks for reading.
(If you’d like to contribute to our weekly fishing reports, 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.)