The percentage of the commercial bass quota that has been filled has barely budged the last two weeks and remains around 85%, a pretty good sign that nobody has been getting out to the deeper water between the rips and Chatham and Nauset Inlets.
Monomoy
Schools of albies continue to race about off of the point and in the rips and the bass fishing remains good, both casting and drifting plugs and flies, as well as tossing plugs. The fish are in deeper water north of the rips, with a couple folks catching 70+ bass vertical jigging.
If you can get there, stripers in the 30+-inch class are still there to be caught. Most of the larger fish that kept the recremercial bass crew around have moved on, apparently, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few here or there willing to take soft plastics or topwater plugs.
The simple reality is that the weather and waters this week have kept folks from fishing the rips so far…
Monomoy is still producing fish for the recremercial crew who are using eels, but it has been a tough go with the winds this week. A few members of the Cape Cod Flyrodders visited the area last weekend and found good numbers of funny fish that refused to take anything cast their way.
The rips are alive with bass; larger soft plastics and topwater plugs have been working well in numerous locations, so it is possible to enjoy some good fishing without crowding.
Most of the fish being caught during the day are between the mid to high-20 inch class up to mid-30-inch, but there are good numbers of them. At times, soft plastics such as unweighted Original Hogy’s and topwater plugs have done the trick, especially when slack tide and the change bring the fish on top, while Hogy Pro Tails have proven to be a good alternative to bait when the tide is running.
The daytime fishing at Monomoy is apparently tough as there are bass feeding on the surface in the rips, but they are feeding on tiny bait and unwilling to hit any traditional topwater plugs or soft plastics.
My last trip to Bearses was disappointing, with a brief spurt of activity at Shovelful on the change. That is a pattern a number of folks have reported this year around Monomoy: very short periods where the fish are feeding before they just seem to disappear.
The bass action has picked right back up in a number of areas. There are still some schools of mackerel around the east side of the islands and livelining them has been working, with some larger fishing being caught this way.