Nantucket Fishing Vacation

Spending a week on Nantucket is wonderful in itself, but you are not getting your money’s worth unless you dedicate some of your time to fishing its fertile waters. Just off the coast of Cape Cod, this island feels much further away than that. The atmosphere is unlike anywhere else I have ever been and though I have frequented the other beautiful islands of the Northeast such as Martha’s Vineyard and Block Island, Nantucket is easily my favorite. For me, the last week of June in Madaket is heaven on earth.

As soon as I arrived on Island I basically unpacked my things and headed to 40^th pole beach.  A hotspot for beach barbecues and shorefishing alike, it is hard to find easier access to great fishing.  In the past I have pulled stripers from these waters, but this year the beach was all bluefish.  The key to getting into them was getting out as far away from shore as possible.  The bottom geography at 40^th pole is a slowly retreating sandy bottom, and the strike zone for the blues was out just about as far as I could cast a 1 ½ ounce Deadly Dick using surfcasting gear.  Everyone in the group I was fishing with would send out ten casts with nothing in return, but the second an extraordinarily long cast hit the water, the rod would bend.  We only hung around for an hour or so, as much more was to be done on the island, but it was comforting to catch a few bluefish to whet our palettes for the week ahead.  Several more trips to 40^th over the week were not as successful, so when Thursday came around and our vacation crew got a chance to hit the water, we were all hungry for more.

Captain Carl of Captain Tom Charters met us at the dock at 6:30 and we wasted no time getting to the fish.  The open-backed Purple Water provided ample space for our group of 5 and was an extremely comfortable ride while we motored out to the first rip we were going to cast to.  These rips are formed based on the combination of sandbar geography, tidal movements, and various currents moving around the island.  Standing waves and whitewater being sucked in a steady direction are a deathtrap for bait, and it proceeds logically that feeding fish flock to these areas.

At times you can see dozens of bluefish and stripers stacked up in the waves just waiting for their next meal.  We fished with plugs and glidebaits on light spinning tackle, giving every angler on board the chance to cast and target where they felt the fish would be.  For a more experienced angler, this may seem to be a given, but seeing as this was the first time saltwater fishing for two of the members of our group it was incredibly rewarding as compared to other charter tactics such as trolling and wire-jigging.  At that first rip, the action was hard to pinpoint, but frequent movement and an active captain who kept changing location to put us on the fish eventually found us in the thick of it at a rip seemingly emerging out of nowhere between Martha’s Vineyard and Muskeget.  It was at this location that we started to consistently get bluefish on almost every cast, and even boated a few stripers!

The strong current action of the rip provides live baitfish to any fish sitting in its draw, but the overly aggressive bluefish usually beat the stripers to the artificials.  Occasionally, though, one would beat the bluefish out and hit the lure. There was one instance in which the aggression of bluefish overwhelmed a hooked striper to such an extent that in the clear water in front of the rip we saw two bluefish still going after the plug in the striper’s mouth and eventually push him off the lure boatside.  This clear water also allowed us the chance to watch multiple bluefish follow their hooked brethren and gave the other anglers a target to cast to in order to hook up as well.

While the 4 stripers we brought in were all schoolie to just under keeper-sized, the bluefish were impressively large for the time of year, shoulders and all.  When the tide began to switch and the rip died down, so did the fishing, so we called it a day and headed back to dock.  The quality of fishing experience was superb and every aspect of the charter provided by Capt. Carl, mate Rory, and Captain Tom’s Charters was exceptional.  It was a great day for experienced and amateur fishermen alike and the active fishing method we used was the most rewarding possible on a charter like this.

Though we were fully pleased by the day, great friend and fellow fishermen Captain David Linton offered us a chance to head south for bluefin tuna the immediate following day, so it was an early night in preparation for an even earlier morning.  Out of the dock at 5am, I will admit that I was exhausted and slept a good portion of the journey south in the berth of his beautiful Grady White 305 Express. I was startled awake by cries of “Dolphin!”, “Whale!”, and “Shark!” as we plowed through the life-filled waters south of Nantucket and the Vineyard.  I have been spoiled over the years of fishing these waters and viewing these sights, but for the new anglers on board who had just caught their first saltwater fish the previous day, this was a scene straight out of a nature documentary. Porpoises were routinely performing aerials behind the boat or carving around in the bow wake, something that I will never be able to adjust to completely.  As we neared our destination, a fishing spot known as the Inside Fingers, all life seemed to disappear.  This was a concerning sign as tuna usually are in life-filled zones of the ocean, so we decided to continue steaming toward The Dump.  We saw some birds a little north of that area and ended up putting lines in the water a few miles south of The Claw.

We only had two of our five lines in the water when the furthest one back got slammed! Out of nowhere there were tuna jumping in our wash and it got everyone’s adrenaline going right away.  We were hooked up to a bluefin within 2 minutes of starting fishing, something I never could have dreamed of when envisioning how the day would go. We got the fish in the boat and immediately tried to set back to get some of the others, but suddenly nothing was to be found.

We pounded the numbers we hooked up to the first tuna at for about an hour hoping to find another but to no avail. The rest of the day was spent trolling spreader bar squid rigs and green machines wherever we saw life, but nothing was biting.  The only other fish we caught were some bluefish that are fun inshore, but offshore they are the bane of a tuna fisherman’s existence as they chew up and compromise expensive squid rigs.  2 bluefish in and we decided the tuna bite wasn’t active enough to continue risking our gear so we headed back to port.  Though we only caught one BFT, it was an amazing day filled with the wonders of the sea and a reminder of how fertile the seas of the Northeast can be, even if they aren’t always full of the exact fish you’re looking for.  Only one fisherman got to hold the rod that morning, but we all enjoyed its bounty in the form of sushi for the next few days.

If you are going to go….

Capt. Tom’s Charters

(508) 228-4225