It seems a bit odd to me that there aren’t more people fishing in the bay, but as Jeff Miller at Canal Bait & Tackle in Sagamore believes, most everyone is concentrating on fishing in the Canal since that is the most consistent spot for bass.
Cape Cod Bay
The challenge for most folks who fish in the bay this week has been the winds. Prior to this stretch of miserable fishing weather, the fishing down his way had been going downhill pretty rapidly. There were some bass still being caught by jigging wire off the north edge of Billingsgate, but if a boat managed to catch its limit, they were bringing fish just over the 28-inch minimum home.
There was a fleet just outside the east entrance to the Canal this morning, but the word today is that they have been waiting for fish to move out of the land cut and it just isn’t happening.
Scorton Ledge is producing some bass, especially for recreational anglers who find the technique both effective and relaxing. Some boaters are also livelining mackerel in the deeper water off Sandy Neck down to Scorton.
The vast majority of the larger bass in the area have moved into the Canal on the tail end of the west tide in pursuit of the large schools of mackerel all the way up to the fishing pier. Things have gotten awfully slow on larger fish in the bay.
Put whatever you have heard about the bay and all the recremercials catching their limit into your fiction box, probably 1 in 50 are getting their limit.
The word from multiple sources is that the bite turned on in Cape Cod Bay today. If you were thinking that was around the Sandwich beaches and Scorton Ledge, you would be wrong, however. Boats fishing in deeper water, say 80 to 100 feet in the middle of the bay, did much better, especially on eels. These were big fish and they were hungry.
Unfortunately, the big bass that have been running in and out of the Canal are now being fished heavily by the commercial crew, from Town Neck to Sandy Neck and even inside Barnstable Harbor. The deeper edges of Billingsgate are fishing OK, with many boats still using wire to drag jigs on the bottom.
Barnstable Harbor is full of schoolies, but not much else. To the east, the charter fleet out of Rock Harbor and boats from Sesuit and even a few from Barnstable have been trolling the tube-and-worm or umbrella rigs. The general consensus towards the east entrance to the Canal is that a good number of the big fish that were in the land cut last week have followed the schools of pogies up towards Plymouth.
With the large body of big bass that was holding outside the east entrance to the Canal from the CC Buoy over to the Fingers having followed the schools of mackerel into the land cut, options for the boat crew have definitely taken a downturn in these waters.