Striper Fishing Cape Cod Bay with Capt. Cullen Lundholm
If Cape Cod is known for anything, it’s not just the beaches and the beautiful summers, it’s the unique and diverse fishing grounds of Cape Cod Bay. Fisherman travel from near and far for a chance to spend a couple of days, or even a couple of hours, in the waters surrounding Cape Cod.
“We’re out here in Cape Cod Bay and we got a pretty unique feed going on,” Capt. Cullen Lundholm of Cape Star Charters said as he fought a feisty fish on light tackle. “There’s a lot of squid and a lot of nice, big bass in the 40 inch range chasing squid allover the surface the last couple of days.”
This June morning, they were chasing mostly squid but as the sky lit up, the mackerel began to appear and the squid fishing slowed down. Switching over to the 2oz. Hogy Pro Tail Paddle, a common lure that Capt. Lundholm uses, he noted that when the squid are penned up on the surface, he’ll fish the unweighted 10” Hogy Originals.
“The fish right now are down a little bit,” Lundholm said. “They were mid-water column and what I did to work this Pro Tail was casting it out and letting it sink about a 20 count.”
This method will let the lure sink down in the water column and it can be worked back up to the surface with various retrieval speeds (fast, medium, slow, twitchy).
Lifting a decent sized bass over the rail of the boat, Lundholm noted how they are feeding heavily on squid and mackerel as their bellies are over extended and some cough up left over chunks of bait fish.
“Hopefully this bait will keep these fish here and we’ll have some good fishing for a bit,” Lundholm said as he released the fish.
One thing that most fisherman love about the Hogy Pro Tail Paddle is its durability. Common amongst many bass anglers, they find that the sandpaper mouths of striped bass, small and large alike, don’t tear up the soft plastic as quickly as some other baits they have used, allowing it to be used time after time on recreational, commercial and chartered fishing trips.
“This is really some great, traditional Cape Cod Fishing,” Lundholm said.
