I always look forward to those unexpected summer fish sightings in the Northeast. You never know what might show up when water temperatures reach their peak. Over the last 15 years, those have included a cubera snapper in New Jersey and Rhode Island, tarpon on Martha’s Vineyard, and the king of them all, the Atlantic sailfish caught in the Cape Cod Canal in 2013.
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I figured that’d be the only nearshore sail on Cape Cod in my lifetime, but I was wrong. Just last week, Jack Schultz was fishing near Chatham, chasing bonito, when he spotted a strange shape breaking the surface. Upon closer inspection, he identified the fish as a sailfish, and Jack said there may have been more than one. Despite being far outside its typical range, the sailfish did not appear to be in distress, and was instead feeding under a small flock of terns. Schultz was able to get clear footage of the Cape Cod sail before the fish spotted the boat and took off.
Atlantic sailfish aren’t unheard of in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic – there were five caught in last week’s White Marlin Open – but they tend to appear in warm, cobalt blue Gulf Stream water, not the green water of Nantucket Sound. The water in Nantucket Sound has been in the mid- to high 70s recently, a comfortable range for many southern species, and the recent arrival of Atlantic bonito has kicked off some excellent late-summer fishing off the South Side of Cape Cod. Perhaps this sailfish followed the bonito in from offshore.
August and early September are the peak of the “lost southern species” season here in the Northeast, so we’ll have to see what else turns up in our waters over the next few weeks. Wayward tarpon have been annual occurrence, so my money is on the silver king granting us an audience before summer’s over.