Cape Cod Fishing Report
Striped bass, bluefish, and bonito are lingering, which is likely due to yet another mid-week stretch of beyond mild weather by November standards. Plus, there’s still a fair amount of bait around. Between silversides, bay anchovies, sand eels, and young-of-year river herring, there is plenty of food for the remaining stripers, blues, and bones to enjoy. That said, tautog fishing continues to be the best thing going on the saltwater front.
Quick limits of large blackfish, some up which are in the double-digit weight class, have been the norm in Vineyard Sound and Buzzards Bay. Last week, Willie Shine caught and released his personal best tog while fishing on the Cape side of Buzzards Bay with his friends. They were in Willie’s boat and with his old fishfinder on the fritz, they planned to bounce around until they found a few respectable tog. While fishing in 20 to 30 feet of water, Willie dropped a green and orange 2-ounce Lunker City Mr. Crab jig tipped with half a crab, and was picked clean immediately. Upon dropping the second half, he waited 2 minutes for a bite and set the hook on a good fish that ran straight for the rocks. He opened the bail and eventually, the fish swam out of the structure and he came tight to it again. They netted the fish shortly after and brought it on board where it weighed just over 10 pounds. He was thinking of keeping the fish to get it printed, but opted to return it to the water in hopes that it will pass down its genes and be caught again when it’s even bigger. Good on you, Willie!
When I bumped into Harvey Russell of My Brother Charters out of Falmouth Harbor, he relayed a similar report about the tog bite in Vineyard Sound. The fishing is so good that boats heading out at sun-up have been coming back to the dock with limits of quality keepers within an hour or so of their first drop. Harvey and his charters caught several tog from 20 to 25 inches this week.
There are still plenty of quality fish in shallow, but they’re starting to move deeper, and as is typical for this time of year, hotspots like Cleveland Ledge have been heavily pressured and mostly picked over.
Meanwhile, to the east, schoolie to over-slot striped bass remain on the outer beaches where they’re feeding on sand eels and spearing alongside some plump hickory shad. I lost one striper in the wash on Sunday afternoon after it scooped up my 2-ounce Crippled Herring close to the beach. One gentleman landed a respectable mid 20-inch schoolie on a diamond jig just before heading back to the lot, while another surfcaster joined me and proceeded to catch an upper 20-inch bass on a chartreuse bucktail. As the sun dropped closer to the horizon, I packed it in only to hear from a passing fisherman that I had missed a late-morning bite, during which he caught two bass measuring 32 and 35 inches in short order. We’ve had some mixed weather conditions and shifting, gusty winds since then, but based on the amount of life out there, it seems like there should be fish in the surf at least through the weekend. Air temperatures will drop into the 30s again on Saturday and Sunday, but there’s more 50 and 60 degree weather ahead, so it’s worth walking the beach and making a few casts under the birds.
In Cape Cod Bay, as well as in the ponds and marshes along the south side, there’s been a noticeable drop in striper numbers and fish activity after those couple days of exceptionally cold weather—once I have to scrape the frost off my truck, I start thinking about fishing for trout and pickerel. But this year, stripers are sticking around, or at least remaining active much longer than they usually do. There’s no way to truly tell whether some of these backwater bass are migratory or resident fish, but they’re here, so why not try to catch them? For the past several weeks, herring have been trickling out of freshwater ponds and subsequently dropping out of the rivers into salt water, so there’s enough bait in the salt ponds and bays to satiate the remaining stripers. If you’re shore fishing in Vineyard Sound, Nantucket Sound, or Buzzards Bay, 3- to 5-inch metals and epoxy/resin jigs and small topwater plugs will be your friends. Casting from the beaches, you may even run into a few bonito and bluefish, which have been mixed in together as of late—and if you are tautog fishing anywhere near the Elizabeth Islands, you’re apt to run into a few schools of them. It has been an unbelievable year for bones from the Canal to the Islands and everywhere in between, and we can only hope for another season like this come 2025 (only with more, and less-finicky albies).
On the freshwater side, largemouth bass fishing has been good and chain pickerel are chewing well, too. It’s almost jerkbait season, and they’ll certainly catch now, but you can still stick a few bass on small- to mid-size lipless crankbaits, swimbaits, and finesse soft plastics. As long as the mild weather persists, so should the decent late-fall bass fishing. Stocked trout fishing in the kettle ponds has also been good for anglers casting spoons and spinners or playing the bait-and-wait game with PowerBait fished close to the bottom.
Connor Swartz at Red Top Sporting Goods in Buzzards Bay said the Cape Cod Canal is fishing well since the calendar turned to November. Red Top’s own Bull MacKinnon caught 5 bass on 5 casts yesterday morning; they’re feeding on top and running far out towards middle of Canal, so make sure you have some poppers and jigs that can reach those breaking fish. Connor said he hasn’t heard of or seen bonito in the Ditch since last weekend. Meanwhile, in Cape Cod Bay, there are some bass moving along the south shore, but they are mostly schoolies in the teen- to 20-inch class. At the other end of the Canal, some big tog are being caught in Buzzards Bay but they’re clearly starting to move deeper—a lot of the shore fishing spots have dried up, but customers are pulling fish from depths of 30 to 40 feet. Fishing should be good for tautog and stripers through the next couple of weeks if we keep getting stretches of warm weather like this.
From the Cape Cod Canal, East End Eddie Doherty reports: ” ‘Donny Donuts’ Morse was on the mainland side in the middle of last week when he spotted a large school of big fish, probably stripers, breaking close to the rip rap stone bank on the Cape side. Long casters Ron Arra, Bob Dyer and “Bull” MacKinnon could have reached the fish, but us mere mortals couldn’t throw that far. Congratulations to accomplished Canal Rat Tim “Hollywood” Petracca who caught a fish the same day he became a first-time grandfather. We won’t be surprised if new arrival Chloe is taught a Palomar knot before she learns her ABCs! Hollywood also caught 3 slots on the east tide Thursday, 1 with a Yo-Zuri white twitch bait at sunrise and 2 on the bottom with a 4-ounce Al Gags chartreuse soft plastic jig. Rob “Fishsticks” Pesa reeled in a fat 30-inch slot for the table on a 5-ounce Al Gags confetti paddle tail on the east rising tide before sunup and the same tide paid off for Dave “Bing” Tomasia with 2 slots falling for his 5-ounce Al Gags white paddle tail on Friday. Kimo Nagatore and Mark “Preacher” MacNeill did well the next day with some slots on soft plastic jigs on the incoming east flow with the same tide producing slots for “Zac Attack” Baker soon after. Spotty yet sometimes rewarding fishing may continue into winter, but my gear is getting stowed away so this is my last report of the season. Thanks for reading and for your questions. Enjoy the holidays, have a safe winter and God willing we’ll wet a line again in the spring!”
Captain Cam Faria of Cambo Charters said he went out for tog today in Buzzard Bay with Mike Xu (a.k.a. Tackle 2 the People) and they started out fishing shallow water, but the bite was just okay. When they moved into some slightly deeper water they started catching them pretty good. They would have had their limit but they opted to throw back the keeper-size females they caught. Unfortunately, they didn’t hook into any cod like last week, but that could change as Cam plans to start fishing deeper now that the bite is showing signs of slowing in shallow. The magic window for them was in 35 to 40 feet of water, and that seems to be the case across the board this week. Any shallower and you will most likely be catching and releasing short fish. Give him a shout to book a charter and get in on the action!
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Evan at Eastman’s Sport and Tackle in Falmouth said that tautog fishing has been good this week, but there are still some other options for saltwater anglers. One of his customers was catching over-slot bass on eels along the Elizabeth Islands, while others are still finding some stripers in the ponds on the south side, although participation is down and the fish are definitely thinning out. He added that there are some bonito still kicking around in the east end of the Canal, and there have been stripers mixed in with them on topwater plugs and epoxy jigs. With this warm weather, and more of it on the way next week, Evan anticipates that the bass and bonito are going to stick around a bit longer. He hasn’t heard much as far as albies, but based on his experience from years past, he’s willing to bet there are still a few out there by the islands mixed in with the bonito and snapper bluefish. On the offshore front, one of his customers relayed that they went out east for tuna earlier this week and said there were bluefin of all sizes out there including some 40 to 50 inchers. They caught and released a giant on the troll and got a few on jigs as well. There were even some cod caught on jigs out east, so despite it being early November, there are plenty of opportunities to continue catching fish in the salt.
Christian at Sports Port Bait and Tackle in Hyannis said it’s been very quiet recently on the shore fishing front in Nantucket Sound, as most shore anglers are hanging it up for the season. That said, the boat crowd is doing well out by Monomoy with stripers and fish remain on the outer beaches. Offshore, Christian said his buddy went fishing out east and they had some quality cod on jigs along with some respectable pollock and two Atlantic halibut in the 30-pound range. The tuna bite has been good out there too, with mixed classes of fish. When we spoke, Christian was in the process of stocking the shop’s shelves with a bunch of pike lures that they just got in, including some 9-inch glidebaits to mimic those stocked trout. Those will catch big largemouth bass too, but for the few pike sharpies on Cape, they’ll go to good use.
From Martha’s Vineyard, Captain Kurt Freund of Fishsticks Charters reports: “Fishing has been good when the weather cooperates. I was out tog fishing on Monday with my friend, Scott Maccaferri, this time on his boat. It was nice to leave the driving to someone else for a change. The weather was beautiful. I’m sure we picked the best weather day of the week. We started on the Vineyard Sound side of the Elizabeths but it was a bit slow, so we ran around to the Buzzards Bay side. It was better but still slow for a while. Action picked up after noon and ended up being quite good. We filled out our limit with tog to 20 inches and released several more keeper-size tog and a bunch of sea bass. I caught all my fish on rigs, but Scott used both rigs and jigs with good results.” Give Kurt a call if you’re looking to do some tautog fishing in Vineyard Sound or Buzzards Bay, as his charter season is almost over.
Cape Cod Fishing Forecast
We’re in for a couple days of cold weather this weekend, but there’s more mild weather to follow. This week, it’s worth heading out early in the morning on the upper Cape to cast jigs and topwater plugs for bass and bonito, with the chance for a couple of small, eater-size bluefish.
On the outer Cape, it’s all about sand eels and spearing. It is most definitely teaser season if you’re fishing the surf. I wish I had one tied on last weekend. If you’re fishing with a teaser, don’t be surprised if you catch a few hickory shad in the process of looking for those November stripes.
With comfortable conditions in the forecast for next week, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to head out east to jig up some cod and pollock, or a halibut if you’re lucky! Of course, there’s also excellent tautog fishing close to home, and stripers are hanging out in the Canal and some of the upper Cape salt ponds and marshes. Otherwise, you can cast around in the freshwater ponds for a mix of bass, pickerel, stocked trout, and some white and yellow perch.
Get out and fish, and enjoy the mild weather while it lasts. Thanks for reading.