Hey Folks! Captain Mike Here….
I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for tuning into our videos this season. We must have set a Salty Cape filming record this season with 23 Full Feature Length Videos for Salty Cape alone. This doesn’t even include shorts and special clips we made just for Hogy Lures. What a year!
We had some cool fishing. 2023 was our second year with the 28 Contender that we trucked in from Ohio last year. Once again, this big little boat; little big boat did not disappoint taking us to the skinny waters of Onset to the Regal Sword East of Chatham to the Dump South of MV to albie patrol from Hyannis to Noman’s. We hit each of the Cape’s micro seasons throughout the year. My four favorite shoots on the contender were (1) Site casting tuna with side scanning sonar, (2) Light tackle trolling tuna south of MV (3) Casting the Surface Erasers in the rip at Nobska and (4) Vertical jigging weakfish, again, with Hogy Surface Erasers.
We filmed with many of our captains too. We started out with Capt. Rob Lowell, Haddock fishing in April and caught fluke and tuna with him later in the season. We had an early start to massive stripers with Capt. Cullen Lundholm in Buzzard’s Bay when filming the launch video for our XL Dogwalkers. Shortly thereafter, we caught a couple of 50lb stripers with Capt. Terry Nugent on our new swimming plug launch video. We caught stripers and blues with Capt. Mike Zammito and Capt. Matt Perachio. The Bluefish shoot with Capt. Matt was super cool. We hit a grand slam with Capt. Dave Peros including a bonito, albie, bluefish and a keeper bass, all on one single lure that day, the 3.5” Hogy Slow tail…
The Hogy Mesh Crate Storage System
2023 was perhaps my favorite year because I finally felt like we had the sense of the Hogy System I have been iterating over the past 17 years. We have now fully embraced the Milk Crate System, a decision that transformed our approach to fishing. Like a golfer who selects just the right club out of a selection of only 8, we streamlined our lure selection to the essentials. This simplicity wasn’t just about efficiency; it became a fishing philosophy that greatly amplified our focus on the water and honestly increased our game. It’s a testament to the idea that sometimes, less really is more. The simple crate system also cuts trip preparation time in half! We had the most successful fishing filming season with the least amount of trip planning time.
Capt. Mike’s Inshore and Offshore Playbooks
Our Inshore & Offshore Playbooks were our north star this season. We stuck to the strategies laid out in them, not just to catch fish but to live the lessons we’ve been teaching. It was a year of reinforcing proven techniques and, excitingly, evolving them. We tweaked, we adapted, and we even penned new entries for our 2024 playbook. It’s a living document, a record of our growth as anglers and storytellers.
The Gotone App
2023 was our second year working with ASGA to help promote research studies for false albacore and the first year working with Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (MA DMF) to film and promote their innovative Citizen Science Project that recruits recreational anglers to conduct field research on the survival rates of striped bass. The project is now log-able via the GotOne! App. We filmed that too!
Without a doubt, my favorite highlight of the season has been working with GotOne! Fishing app. I honestly don’t know where to start… Ok, I’ll start by mentioning that we intersected with GotOne! while working with ASGA and Ma DMF, both organizations are using GotOne! to log important research information. The apps simplicity and robust data wraps with each catch make this app commercial grade.
Fast forward to October when I realized the app could back date information with old photos. I loved this feature so much; I was quick to document that with a “how to video” on its logging functions. This back-dating function is truly amazing. We even got better at taking enough representative photos on each trip because we knew the app would back-cast our season from photos with information like location, historical weather, moon phase and tide at point of catch easily accessed by using the metadata in photos.
We liked using GotOne! so much; we even sponsored our own Albie Research Function for the 2024 season to compare data from the results of the albie survey we sent out in September.
We loaded all our photos from the season and now, like magic we have amazing data and the app even generated this incredible summary from the season. (We used the beta version. The feature will be released sometime in 2024.)
