Kayak Fishing Forums

[puppet]

This is a hybrid of reports...surf, canal, and boat...a couple of weekends ago.

I usually make an anual trip to Cape Cod every spring. This year the
family stayed home and I dragged a couple of my co-workers with me for
four days of fishing.

The fishing was not excellent but it sure beats work and trying to be a
good robot. We fished pretty hard...well...at least for me. We probably logged
about 10 hrs of sleep over the total 4 days.

Left CT friday at 11 pm to drive to the Cape Cod Canal....which we fished
until 5 am. I had been to the canal once before during the daylight hours...
an early May a few years back. Got skunked on that trip, but it served
well as a recon to come back sometime in the dark.



We arrived to the Canal around 3am. I expected incoming tides but
found outgoing. According to the books...we were in the wrong place for
that stage of the tide. We stuck to the plan even though we did not see
another fisherman the whole outing. We were definitely in the wrong spot.

That being said, first cast, fish on....a small schoolie on a bucktail. A few
casts later I hooked into a gorilla blue on a 7" tsunami paddle tail....that
was fun and a nice surprise. We moved around a bit and I found another
striper around 30" who gave me a nice tail splash on the release. Truth be told...
The current had picked up a bit and it took me a while to land the fish.
Hats off to guys who catch bigger models in the Canal. It must be a real battle.



We packed it up around 445 am and headed east an hour to an inlet on
the ocean side, where we found birds working the outgoing edge.



We picked up bluefish and a couple striped bass. One of the blues barfed
up squid.





All the fish were micro, but it was nice to wade out on the bars and
explore the breaks in the sand.








We fished until lunch../ then ate...crashed for an hour then fished the
afternoon into 10pm. Practical cookie cutter sample of the daylight hours
but we heard some bigger models crashing about. We just couldn't
convert them.



Slept four hours and got up and drove to Nauset...hit the slack and
outgoing and I caught one blue. No bait...no bass...It was beautiful though.
We stayed there for four hours....we saw only two seals. Usually the area
is thick with them. I think I heard one of them laughing....something about tourists.












We hit the same spot the as the night before to find the ratio of blues to
bass shifted. Practically all bass this round, but they were all smaller and
were striking our lures half hearted. We stayed in hopes that bigger
models might move in but they never did.



The next day, we Chartered a boat out of Truro. In the past when I have chartered, it
has been absolutely spectacular off Race point with plenty of fish heavily feeding.



It didn't take long for us to start metering fish. The captain had us jigging
for them. No takers. He estimated that there were thousands of fish
below us...and on the previous day they were surface feeding. We were
at slack and we hoped that when the tide turned they might activate. On
the second drift...I hooked a really puller. Turned out it was foul hooked
in the tail.



Back in the drink it went. I was figuring with the numbers below...we will
surely have more than enough bass to pick from. Right off the bat I fair
hooked a small 30" bass that I released. The next four hours were
brutal. Tons of fish metering....lots of phantoms in the 20lb range
following the jigs up....just very few actual strikes. The water was
ranging from 40-150'....and we were not used to jigging....first timers.
The gas tank was running empty. Should have had my Wheaties.





My friend mark caught a nice 37" fish. The awesome thing is that it was his
first keeper bass ever....yeeeeeaaaah! And my friend Bryan had the heat
catching 5 nice fish. He had the rhythm and energy to get the fish
to commit. Of the three of us, he was the the most consistent. Mark and I
labored a couple hours for nothing....but picked off another fish each before
the outing was through. We ended up doing pretty good. Whenever I looked
around it seemed like no other boats were hooking up. Hats off to
Captain Bobby Rice to guide us through some tough fishing. The outing
was awesome!







On tuesday morning we left the Cape but on the way out we hit the canal
one more time. Again...I messed up the tides, but didn't have the energy
to bother changing locations. We got about three hours of casting
practice and split.

[yakrider]

that's a hard core trip!
not enough sleep!
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[puppet]

yeah...I couldn't function...not good.

Next time I need to pace it better.