As Capt. Mike announced on May 10, I will once again be providing reports for Salty Cape, but with a new twist this year. As opposed to the weekly reports/columns I have been writing for 30 years, after plenty of conversations with Mike, we have opted for a daily report format. I will be reporting on different sections of the Cape and Islands each day, sometimes focusing on one area and on others two or more, combining information from my personal and guided trips, talks I’ve had with local tackle shops, and even local charter captains and recreational anglers – including members of the Hogy family – who get to enjoy fishing just for fun.
There will be no set schedule of when I will cover an area during that week, but you can check back regularly to see what news, suggestions, and tips I will have to offer as I cover a different regions.
One of the exclusive features that these reports will offer are direct references to tackle, techniques, and wide array of other valuable information contained in Capt. Mike’s Inshore Playbook and Capt. Mike’s Tuna Playbook. Both of these full color playbooks are geared to light tackle anglers, whether they cast, jig, or troll and are great resources for beginning anglers as well as those who have earned their seven league boots.
Along with tackle suggestions for each type of fishing, Capt. Mike provides clear explanations of why a given rod and reel combination, type of line, or lure works for him and will do the same for you.
Given that I have to get to a report, there isn’t enough time to cover all the features of the Capt. Mike’s Playbooks, but my favorite are the diagrams of each Approach that you might have seen the Hogy crew employ in one of their videos – but now you have every detail laid out in black and white – or in this case, vibrant colors.
So look for the Bold Face references that I will try to remember to include in every report, although I hope you’ll cut me some slack since the old memory isn’t what it used to be!
/// The Report!! ///
What I can tell you is that the wind direction in most parts of the Cape have switched over to somewhere between south and southwest, but even though it’s still a bit “breezy,” that’s good news according to Jeff Miller at Canal Bait and Tackle in Sagamore. Jeff said that the nasty stretch of clouds, rain, and spit we had over the previous four days or so including winds out of the east/northeast that stirred up the bait in the Cape Cod Canal. In fact, it apparently moved a lot of the mackerel – especially the larger stuff – out into deeper water, but there still is some solid action generally towards the middle of the Canal, say between the herring run and the Sagamore Bridge. A lot of folks have switched over to large double jointed glide baits like Jeff’s Canal Swimmer or the Magic Swimmer, which started the trend towards this style of lure back in the day. Some of the regulars are also using Finnish style swimmers, both classics like the Cotton Cordell and newer styles from Daiwa and Yo-zuri. While the latter feature weighting systems that can assist with casting distance, the reality is that “loading” plastic plugs of all types with BB’s, extra lead, and even sometimes water or oil is a long and storied tradition that helps swimmers of this type dig and keep from rolling, which is especially important in waters with lots of current like the Canal.
Some of the sharpies have switched over to old school bucktails if they opt to jig, suggesting that there are some squid in the land cut as well, Jeff noted. This jig will better match a Loligo Pealeii’s movement – when tipped with pork rind – than the ever popular variety of paddletail jigs which were hot through the early part of last week and no doubt will be at the top of everyone’s list once again.
The word from Connor Swartz at Red Top in Buzzards Bay is that he was at the Canal starting around first light this morning and there were a lot of fish in the stretch that Jeff mentioned above. Given my affinity for topwater fishing, it was good to hear that Connor was plugging, which I have a bad habit of simply associating with fishing poppers on top, both pencils and Polaris-styles, in the Ditch.
Of course, big spooks are also popular and also qualify as surface offerings, but in this case Connor was using one of those wooden “bowling pin” plugs, in this case a five ounce model from Outcast Lures, one of the custom plugmakers who all have their own take on this style, from the size and shape of the body, including the taper from front to back, as well as the configuration of the nose or where the line tie is. The one that he mentioned has what looks to be a pencil popper style head, while others opt for more of a rounded taper at the nose.
Despite how heavily weighted these plugs are, I still believed that the primary objective was to get them on the surface and Connor said that a lot of people who use them believe the same thing and work on getting them on top right away. Ultimately, he continued, this defeats one of the unique features of this plug, which is swimming the plug subsurface at the outset, something Connor does for the first twenty yards of his swing and retrieve.
Connor did see one school of mackerel move east with the current and it was hugging close to the riprap; most of these baitfish have been tinkers in the six to seven-inch range. The presence of some macks had him thinking that he could be in for a good morning, but ultimately it was another baitfish that got the bass fired up: pogies. They were right on top and a parrot (chartreuse over yellow) variation produced some fish, as did a white plug.
There were a good number of stripers in the 15 to 20-pound class caught, with a few in the 30-pound range as well, and Connor emphasized that these fish were definitely on the move with the east current, not really holding in one spot to feed for any length of time, so it was a matter of trying to pick a fish or two out of one school before waiting for another to move down.
Meanwhile, at the west end, things are slow with the off cycle tides, although there are some fish being caught in the afternoon on the preferred latter stages of the west/turn to the east.
At the east end, what had been some improved fishing really slowed with the disappearance of most of the mackerel, but as Jeff noted, there is so much small bait around that it should draw the larger fish back in.
Finally, if you are planning on giving the Big Ditch an honest go this season, check out the Canal Approach section of the Inshore Playbook; it will give you some suggestions on how to fish the current in spots such as the breachways in Rhode Island or even the shoreline of a long entrance channel – which are like canals – leading up into a harbor or bay. But nothing will prepare you for the crowds and the necessity of staying in rhythm with the casting distance/direction/angle of other anglers’ casts and retrieves. I would guess that more fish are caught on jigs than any other lure in this body of water, and if you fishing a heavy enough jig so you are working and even bouncing it on the bottom, you will hang up sometimes. The best way, however, to sacrifice some lead – whether dressed in bucktail or soft plastic – is to work it too long on the swing or downcurrent where you can assured that a gremlin disguised as a mussel bed or other “sticky” structure will reach out and grab it.
