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| North Winds Stir - Fish Still Around |
Jerry Vovcsko
Posted: Mon, November 02, 2009
Those pesky north winds we’ve been contending with the past week or so have pretty much given our fall foliage it’s stark, mid-winter look and supplied us with a healthy dose of leaf-raking activity for the weekend honey-do list. They’ve also pushed water temperatures down toward the dreaded fifty-degree mark and it won’t be long until the only fishing available will target winter flounder, deepwater cod or freshwater species in local ponds. But not just yet.
There are still striped bass around if you know where to find them. Heck, anglers will continue to pick up the occasional errant bluefish from time to time for a while yet and those fluky Gulf Stream eddies that bring tropical fish into Woods Hole may yet deliver a stray mahi mahi or Spanish mackerel to our vicinity. Stripers still on hand will be feeling a bit lethargic as the water chills so it’s a good idea to slow the retrieve and give that bass a chance to catch up to bait or lure.
Vineyard Sound and Buzzards Bay water temperatures remain (for the moment) in the mid-to low fifties and that means the east end of the CC Canal will receive those warmer currents shortly after the tide turns and begins running easterly. Bass coming down from Cape Cod Bay will take advantage of the five or six degree difference in water temperature and that’s a good time to slow-fish plugs along the Big Ditch. Until the current starts really ripping there’s a window of time where anglers work the bottom with jigs or jig ‘n plastic combos. Once again, be advised that if you’re not hanging up (and losing the occasional jig) on the bottom, you’re not fishing deep enough. There are stripers lurking in those holes and they’re not coming up to chase baits so an angler has to get down to where they are or go fishless.
Stripers are on the move in Buzzards Bay and the eastern shore of the Bay from North Falmouth down to Cuttyhunk will have stripers moving through. Where nothing was happening yesterday, things may be popping today. Those winds will dictate how much small boat activity is available for the next couple of weeks but the harbors and estuaries all along Buzzards Bay and Vineyard Sound will continue to hold bass for some time and they’re worth a look. Jetty fishing in the Sound cranks up as well and the stretch of shoreline from Bass River westward to Woods Hole continues to produce fish, sometimes even into December. The Green Pond area in Falmouth is one such place to try and my own favorite is at the Maravista jetty on the west side of the channel spilling out from Great Pond.
A twenty-minute drive (now that the tourists have gone) down route 28 to the Mashpee Rotary leads to the stretch of beach at Popponesset and the shallow waters along shore warm quickly when the sun shows up for a couple of afternoons so that’s another possibility. Catch the action when stripers pin bait against the beach and a lucky angler can find the fishing nearly as good as mid-season blitz time. These fish will most likely be schoolie-size so it’s worth flattening the barb in order to get back in the game as quickly as possible.
It’s a dangerous world out there as we all know and now we hear that two coyotes attacked a Canadian woman while she was hiking alone in a national park in eastern Canada and killed Taylor Mitchell, 19, a country folksinger from Toronto. She was hiking solo on a trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Nova Scotia when the attack occurred. She was airlifted to a Halifax hospital in critical condition and died Wednesday morning, authorities said. Coyotes, which also are known as prairie wolves, are found from Central American to the United States and Canada but wildlife biologist Bob Bancroft said coyote attacks are extremely rare because the animals are usually shy.
An RCMP spokesperson said other hikers heard Mitchell's screams for help on Tuesday and called emergency police dispatchers. Police who were in the area reached the scene quickly and shot one of the animals, apparently wounding it. But the wounded animal and a companion coyote managed to get away. An Emergency Health Services official said Mitchell already was in critical condition when paramedics arrived on the scene and had multiple bites over her entire body and was losing a considerable amount of blood from the wounds.
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