Monomoy/Outer Cape
Friday Afternoon Update: Fishing hot and heavy out towards Monomoy today. Just got this pic and video from Fred Alexander in Brewster. “Didn’t even make it to the point and it was on fire first thing this morning in the fog. Continued up until about an hour ago. Finally got tired and head home.”
I finally managed to catch up with the folks at North Chatham Outfitters and Jake Mandirola reported in the last week the bass have shown in good numbers in the rips off of Monomoy. The fish are chowing on good numbers of squid, making pink, white, and amber colors very productive. The topwater bite has been OK, but he has been using pink, plastic Finnish style swimming plugs and catching more fish. Larger soft plastics – which always means the 10-inch Hogy Original to me – are good choices as well, but keep in mind that as the current and white water increases, switching to a weighted swimbait hook is a good idea as it allows you to keep solid contact with the lure, which you can also achieve with a light jighead.
One thing that I need to stop talking about is the lack of truly small bass – say 14 to 20-inches – that we have been catching and how this just might not be a good thing. Perhaps Jake said it best when he mentioned that “I haven’t been catching anything crazy small.” And why would anyone complain when they are catching fish that range from 28 inches to over 40 almost exclusively?
Anyway, Jake said that before the bass moved into the rips, most people had been catching fish around the schools of pogies between Harwich and Chatham, many of which were pretty close to shore, yet still required a boat to reach. Although working the edges of these baitfish concentrations with a spook style plug, whether the Hogy Charter Grade Dog Walker or Dog Walker XL, can elicit some incredible bites, Jake said that some folks are using a flutter style jig, dropping it down below the pogies where the larger fish often hang. This is similar to the way Capt. Mike used the Hogy Sand Eel Jigs and the Search & Drop Approach yesterday in Vineyard Sound to produce some great fish.
Originally, Jake said that people were using bunker spoons and added that this technique is making its way up from spots south of the Cape and I have heard that on occasion people have been dropping these spoons – which were originally designed for trolling – down to fish. This is similar to a technique that Bruce Miller at Canal Bait and Tackle in Sagamore suggested to me several years ago. In this case, when you are trolling the tube-and-worm and mark a school of fish, stop the boat and let the weighted tube drop down to the bass.
