Nor'east Saltwater Weekly Online Reports powered by:
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| Macs in the Canal, Stripers to Follow, News at 11 |
Jerry Vovcsko
Posted: Sun, October 25, 2009
At the moment it appears we are in the season of Nor’easters and anyone who doubts it need only glance at the trees, now devoid of much of their foliage, to confirm that winter is lurking just around the corner. Next weekend we will shift from Daylight Savings Time to our old familiar Eastern Standard. Of course, the striped bass population knows, or cares, nothing about our silly preoccupation with the calendar; they work on a time clock of their own and the trigger has definitely been pulled for the fall migration to get under way.
Not to say that the fish are all gone…far from it. The Canal has seen a recent influx of mackerel and that means Large bass are also to be found lurking and feeding. Local anglers know to fish the tides coming from Buzzards Bay and spilling into Cape Cod Bay because the warmer waters put the bass in a better frame of mind to feed on those calorie-laden macs. Water temperatures in Buzzards Bay these days fluctuate in the mid-fifties. Cape Cod Bay and points north run five degrees or so cooler, not a big deal to we humans but a very big deal to the bass.
As always there are stripers sitting in close to the shore among the rocks and boulders that line the coast of the Elizabeth Islands. If an angler has pretty much anything that swims available to liveline along that shoreline nowadays, said angler is playing in, as they say, the tall grass indeed. Barring that, plastic baits and imitation eels are a good substitute. It’s a good idea to swim lures a tad slower as the late season wears on. With water temperature dropping fish stripers grow ever more lethargic and less inclined to sprint after food. Make it easier for Bubba Bass to chow down and the results are a lot likelier to be favorable.
Winter flounder have been showing up in some of the estuaries, including the Waquoit River and the Coonamessett. Those folks working their magic up around Scorton Creek are catching the occasional bass as the flood tide turns to the ebb stage and begins to run. There will be flounder moving in that estuary as well and I always made it a point to carry a tin of night crawlers with me for when the bait shops began to run out of seaworms. The crawlers don’t last very long in the salt but the fish are happy to eat them and they make a fine flatfish bait while they’re still wiggly. Being one who always liked to fiddle around and experiment when the fishing was slow going I tried such modifications as adding a couple of mini marshmallows slid up the hook above the worm and one of my more Rube Goldberg creations featured a red bead up top and a silver one between marshmallows and worm. Every once in a while I’d come up with a rig that seemed to light up the flatties and I’d limit out while others in the vicinity went fishless. Don’t know what value the beads added, if any, but it was always fun to experiment.
The Patriots play Tampa Bay at Wembley Stadium in England this week; last Sunday they took on Tennessee in the snow (one inch that fell in a couple of hours in the afternoon). No telling what game time conditions will be over there but on the Cape you can pretty much write in: Winds from the northeast, temperatures in the low fifties, small boats stay home. Pretty soon we’ll be looking toward Plan “B”, i.e., freshwater activity, but that’s another story to be told another day. Right now the migration continues and the striped bass are on the move. If you ask me, it’s a darned good time to head up to the Canal and wet a line; the stripers are still around and they’re hungry.
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