Cape Cod Fishing Report: 5/30/2024
Buzzard’s Bay – Canal – Cape Cod Bay
Just got off the phone with Mark Tenerowicz who was paddling back to the ramp from one of his favorite spots in upper Buzzards Bay around Fairhaven and he said the topwater action was phenomenal. He was sitting in his kayak and looking around at bass blitzes in every direction and today they were far less fussy and willing to take topwater plugs, including the smaller Hogy Charter Grade Popper. He also threw a small heavily weighted needlefish type plug in amber that sounded an awful like the Hogy Surface Eraser, which Capt. Mike introduced last fall and proved to be a gamechanger, with many of the attributes of a soft plastic in terms of movement, but it casts much farther and you can work it at different levels of the water column without having to add weight through some sort of rigging. There was no indication that the fish were feeding on anything different than the microbait – one to two-inch skinny silver baitfish – than they have been, but most likely the overcast, rainy conditions and wind direction made them far less fussy than they were in the calm, high bright sunshine yesterday.
I really want some identification on this small bait, so if anyone gets a good photo of it, I would appreciate it your sending it to me so I can send it off to a fisheries person who can solve the mystery for me.
In another case of fussy fish on microbait, Connor Swartz from Red Top in Buzzards Bay admitted that he and his buddy resorted to using the fly rod after being frustrated by the bass feeding on whatever this stuff is up inside Phinney’s Harbor. They had tried all kinds of plugs and soft plastics, but it took a small tubing/epoxy pattern sold at the shop – and a little work on the casting – to get some of these fish on the line.
If you don’t want to deal with fly fishing – and who would? – you could try the Pop ‘n Fly Retrieve that Capt. Mike is a fan of when fishing for albies. Using teasers like the Hogy Protail Softbait Fly, either attached to the tail end of a plug via a length of length or in front of a plug attached via a knot to the leader or one of the loops on a swivel that folks use to connect main line to leader, goes back a long ways in the fishing world, with a soft plastic sand eel imitation imported from England revolutionizing bass fishing on the backside of the Cape back in the 70’s.
A small spook or needlefish plug is a great choice for delivering a teaser at night as they create a great wake at a slow retrieve, with floating Finnish style swimming plugs another option.
Overall, Connor hasn’t heard much in the way of schools of pogies up inside any of the protected bodies of water along the B-Bay Cape shoreline or the south coast, but folks are still catching some big fish in the early AM and again at dusk on super-sized spooks like the Hogy Dog Walker XL worked around structure. It’s hard to say what these fish are feeding on at the moment in shallower water that typically harbors pogies in the spring time, but Connor’s fishing buddy, Ian Lumsden, who also works at Red Top found fish yesterday well before first light until they turned off when the sun came up. This morning, with some rain and plenty of cloudiness and a bit of north/northeast wind, it is not uncommon that these fish will remain on the bite throughout the tide. A Boat Blind Casting Approach is one way to go, but being familiar with the structure in an area and going with a much more targeted approach similar to a Boulder Fields and Reef Casting Approach, even when the structure isn’t as apparent.
Connor added that boat folks looking to target larger bass by casting around the west entrance to the Canal have been focused on edges where the Mashnee Flats drop off into the Canal. Heavy paddletail jigs up to five ounces are working well, both the deeper, broader style such as the Hogy Pro Tail Paddle Swimbait or the narrower versions like the Hogy Pro Tail Eel based on what type of bait the fish are feeding on.
Up in the Canal itself – or the land cut if you wish – Jeff Miller at Canal Bait and Tackle in Sagamore someone he knows had a good night around the west end between the railroad bridge and the Bourne Bridge on the east tide, which shaped up around midnight. He was using paddletails between 3.5 and 5-ounces, with white his preferred color.
Overall, Jeff said the tides have been off cycle for what the early morning/daybreak crew likes, but starting next week when the first light east turn combines with the full or Strawberry Moon, he anticipates a push of really big bass in the Big Ditch. He has heard from a number of New York anglers that the big, breeding fish have moved out of the Hudson and show up in the Canal on this cycle, creating the first of the really big topwater feeds of the season.
Unlike so many Canal anglers, both regulars and those getting started, Connor Swartz is not into jigging and he has been catching fish on top, sometimes around the west end and towards the middle as well. These are fish that move into the Canal on the east tide from Buzzards Bay – for the most part – and then slide back into the protection of holes around the west entrance or even farther out into the bay. They will feed on top during either tide, but the west is often the better option for working these bodies of resident fish since they are pushing bait in the direction of waters where they will hang and digest whatever they have been able to find, which at the moment are pogies and squid, along with some small mackerel.
There hasn’t been a ton of news from the east end of the Canal, but there have been scattered reports of bass following some mackerel out of Cape Cod Bay on the west current, before dropping back out into the bay at some stage of the east. This is really the inverse of the west end scenario, but it’s important to realize that this is just one pattern of the many that take place during the season.
I hope to get out on the northside tomorrow to do some scouting for myself during a good falling tide in the morning; Barnstable Harbor is definitely worth a shot since the shot of warmer water coming out from areas up inside, including the marshes, typically flushes out plenty of bait that can create good, sustained surface action.
Christian Cook, part of the staff at the Sports Port in Hyannis, told me he and his son Alex fished Scorton Creek in the afternoon after work and they witnessed a number of flyrodders catching hickory shad and a few schoolies. Christian has been working hard to get Alex his first bass as he has caught the fishing bug now that he is 23; they tried plugs and soft plastics, but the only action they had was apparently from a bluefish that chopped up one of the latter.
Oh, and Evan Eastman from Eastman’s Sport & Tackle on Main Street promised me a report on his evening trip into Nantucket and Vineyard Sounds yesterday and he was a man of his word. He was really excited about the amount of squid they found in the rips between Falmouth Harbor and Nobska, as were a boatload of bass. Evan is a big fan of the amber Charter Grade Popper and it continued to produce, but one of Evan’s customers that joined him did very well using a bone colored Finnish style swimmer on the swing and then employing a slow retrieve or let it dance in the face of the rip as Evan suggested. They caught between 15 and 20 bass, a lot of them slot sized (28 to less than 31-inches)and one that was well over the upper limit of the range that recreational anglers can legally take a striper home.
Way too many folks are in a hurry to retrieve their plug, plastic, or jig back to the boat, thereby failing to keep it in where the fish are holding, as explained in Capt. Mike’s Casting A Rip Approach that you can find in his Inshore Playbook.
