Cape Cod Fishing Reports

Cape Cod Fishing Reports: June 6, 2024

The Canal – Monomoy – Outer Cape – Nantucket Sound

The Canal

Cape Cod Fishing Report: 6/5/2024

Nantucket + Vineyard Sound – Buzzards Bay – The Canal

Another great day of fishing here on Cape as the shoals in Nantucket and Vineyard Sounds continue to produce fish – albeit in a way that many people avoid at all costs! Bigger black sea bass (BSB) are being caught in greater numbers, although if you fish many of the more popular, named locations rather than having worked on discovering patches of hard bottom that have produced big males in the past, you are still going to pick through a lot of shorts. Finally, more bluefish are being reported and they are big.

NANTUCKET AND VINEYARD SOUNDS

I had the chance to catch up with a couple of well-known charterboat captains in Falmouth Harbor this morning and they confirmed that there are good numbers of bigger bass within a short distance of the mouth of the harbor – if you are willing to jig wire and the pig-and-jig. Capt. Willy Hatch was surprised that I was making the longer run to the backside of the Vineyard, but the reality is that some of the inshore shoals such as Nobska, Hedge Fence, and Middle Ground have slowed in terms of topwater action, perhaps a function of the water getting water and the amount of pressure these fish have seen.

Cape Cod Fishing Report: 6/5/2024

Vineyard + Nantucket Sound – Capt. Mike

There are still plenty of bass on many of the shoals in Nantucket and Vineyard Sounds, but there can still be a degree of variability in the size and numbers of fish from day-to-day. A versatile angler is prepared with the proper equipment and understanding of different approaches to deal with a number of factors, including the depth the fish are feeding at; what they are feeding on; and the nature of how they are feeding, i.e., sipping or aggressively taking plugs on the surface.

Given the success that folks who are adept at jigging wire have enjoyed with larger bass, I rung up the good skipper of the Hogy ship and, as usual, Capt. Mike delivered today with his report: Wednesday: “What does the owner of a Fishing blog and tackle company do on his morning off with an old friend? YEP- YOU GOT IT!! We snuck out this AM in the sounds before the noon time blow that was forcasted. We had it pretty good. Rather than push East like we did yesterday, I pushed West looking for schools of bass that should be in all the usual haunts this time of year on Vineyard sound. We found some gulls and bass feeding on the surface and in attempts to target larger stripers, we started with vertical jigging with 6.5oz Sand Eeel jigs around a school of surface feeding striped and pulled up some nice “overs” with fish of all sizes mixed in. This was in deeper water. We also managed to catch a few fluke (shorts) that got me fired up for the season! It’s that time!! We also got some great topwater action too!

Once the tide teetered out, we pushed East, closer to Falmouth and found the squid fed stripers that have been haunting all the rips in both sounds. The bass were finicky “nipping” at the pugs but not smashing them. The tide was almost slack, so I sort of expected that. We put on the new olive/translucent white version of the  of the 5.5” Hogy Charter Grade Dogwalker just for the sake of it. We immediately got smashed! and repeated the exercise multiple times before we got hungry for lunch. I did not expect that this would be the top color/lure for us on the rip, not what I would think of as a natural squid color… Must have something to do with the translucency. I guess the saying takes sense here” Sometimes you don’t need to know ‘why’ to know ‘what.'”