Cape Cod Fishing Report: 5/24/2024

Cape Cod Fishing Report: 5/24/2024

I fished a number of shoals in Nantucket Sound between Falmouth and the Vineyard today, as well as inside Woods Hole, but the action was very disappointing. I don’t know if it was just me, but the currents seemed surprisingly sluggish and it took much longer for the rips to set up. Ultimately, I was so desperate to explain the pick of small fish on both poppers and soft plastics that I fell back on the old saw about things being slow the day after a full moon because the fish were feeding all night. On the other hand, I did see a charterboat out of Falmouth stemming the tide down around Nobska and dropping wire lines back into and beyond the white water line with some good results, so I am once again reminded that I have to mix things up as you can see Capt. Mike do in his video on the Hogy website titled Fishing for Striped Bass at Nobska Point in which he demonstrates how switching to a subsurface approach – in this case with the Hogy Thumper Jig – can put you into bass that aren’t on the surface pushing squid or other baitfish.

If I recall correctly, in that taping the fish were apparently feeding on herring, which I don’t recall being in the typical May rip scenario, but a discussion I had with Doug Asselin at Dick’s Bait & Tackle in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard reminded me that no matter what fishing journals and predictions based on past experience may suggest, the reality is that every season is different. In this case, Doug said that in the 17 years that he has been working at the shop – and folks who have been fishing the Vineyard a lot longer than that – he has never seen mackerel linger for more than a month in pretty much every harbor, both down island like Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, and Vineyard Haven as well as up island inside Menemsha. Owner Steve Morris said he remembers catching tinkers inside Oak Bluffs when he was a kid, but Doug said it was possible to catch mackerel of all sizes pretty much any day you wanted to, from boat or shore. I mentioned a while back that I ran into some microbait down along the Elizabeths that I could not identify and Doug said the mackerel were feeding on something very similar and I sure would like to know what it is.

Oh, and the mackerel are still around as Steve picked one up this week while jigging for squid, which is just starting to pick up in these parts and the presence of more Loligo Pealeii at this end of the sound as helped to create more action – mainly with 24 to 26-inch bass and the occasional slot fish – around Middle Ground and Hedge Fence, to name a couple of the more popular spots. And I can tell you, based on what I experienced this morning, that you are going to have plenty of company in these locations and prepare to play bumper cars as boats jockey for position and race to be first to where some fish popped up on squid or gulls signaled where fish were holding.

Overall, Doug said the fishing on the Vineyard has gotten off to a slow, difficult start for two reasons: the amount of weed in the water combined with colder than usual temperatures for this time of year. I never really thought about it this way, but Doug described the waters between the southside of the Cape and the Vineyard as like a funnel in which the weed just flows back and forth with the currents until something helps to flush it out. The wind shift over the last several days to the southwest has helped warm the water from the low 50’s to around 54 to 56 on average with one spot I hit registering 58, but the weed problem created by the stretch of northeasterly/easterly winds last week that blew all that vegetation over toward island remains an issue. Usually Middle Ground will be cleaner on one tide or another, but once the current gets going in either direction, then anything other than a soft plastic or topwater plug is going to come back all munged up.

Even around spots like the bridges on State Beach, the entrances to the backwaters have been all “munged” up, making it a tough start for the shore crew. In fact, one angler who has come for a lot of years to fish Chappy at this point in May told Doug that he has not caught a fish there this week and he hasn’t seen anyone else hook up.

And for those of you who like them as much as I do, that means bluefish as well, although one guy came into the shop with a photo of one that he caught recently from shore.

Now while the flotilla of stinkpots jockeyed for a shot at fish in Nantucket Sound and less so in Vineyard Sound, Mark Tenerowicz was up in Buzzards Bay inside Fairhaven enjoying what he called “just best day of fishing ever, flat calm with lots of heavy schoolies and some larger fish as well.” The number of fish caught obviously helped, but what really got Mark excited was the technical challenge of getting a cast right on or just in front of a rising fish; pink or amber soft plastics were the lures of choice and he emphasized the need to change it up in terms of retrieve speed and action to get a fish to commit. His final words: “It was just so much fun.”