The tautog bite was steadily improving, with most serious toggers having little trouble picking up their limit of five fish 16-inches or larger fish, with the bag limit jumping up from three on October 15.
Buzzards Bay
Todd Benedict at Falmouth Bait & Tackle in the Teaticket section of Falmouth across from McDonald’s had nothing but good…
From the Maritime Academy over to Onset and down throughout the west entrance to the Canal, there has been a good big bass bite this week. The stretch from West Falmouth to Old Silver Beach continues to the one most often mentioned when it comes to albies, but overall the action on funny fish has been sporadic, with early mornings typically producing whatever activity there is that day.
There have been large schools of smaller bass throughout the bay, especially in areas close to shore. As far as the albies closer to the Cape side of the bay, there had been reports of small schools mixed in with bluefish around the west entrance to the Canal.
There have been schools of albies and small bluefish all along the bayside shoreline of the Cape; I have seen them working in right along the sand at Old Silver Beach, from the entrance to West Falmouth Harbor to Black Beach/Sippewissett Marsh, and from Gunning Point to the backside of Penzance.
Albie and bonito fishing from Woods Hole to the Maritime Academy is a matter of finding the largest concentrations of bait, which often hold at the entrances to spots such as West Falmouth, Monument Beach/Phinney’s Harbor, and Onset. There has also been some really good surface bass feeds from Quissett to West Falmouth.
The bonito bite has been outstanding in Buzzards Bay, according to many folks, with schools reported from Quissett to all the way up to the Maritime Academy; West Falmouth and Old Silver Beach appear to be spots where they have been most concentrated.
There are plenty of bonito and small stripers in Buzzards Bay at the moment, along with bluefish, but no albies have been reported yet.
The winds out of the north this week kept pretty much everyone tied the dock. Prior to the blow, folks were picking up good numbers of bass from 20-inch schoolies to those at and just over 30-inches, especially in the morning and evening on the change of the tide. There is an ample supply of small bait around and that has the bass feeding aggressively on the surface, with some schools of small bluefish in the mix as well.
If you like bonito and albies, then upper Buzzards Bay is where you might want to be. Jeff Hopwood at Maco’s said that last weekend, schools of bones and little tunny were reported outside of Onset where there are large schools of sand eels and peanut bunker, as well as some silversides. It’s not unusual to make contact with funny fish between Wing’s Neck and Stony Point Dike on an east current, particularly when it start, and then follow them up to the Maritime Academy.