Cape Cod & RI Pt. 3: Clear Water, Glowing Sand, and Cinder Worms

With the sun quickly sinking Saturday evening Noah and I made the best of the remaining light and went to a long North Shore jetty where we hoped to get a chance at atlantic mackerel or pollock, both of which would be new species for us. We didn't find those, but the startlingly clear water of Cape Cod Bay was full of life. Bergals, peanut bunker, butterfish, and silversides were everywhere. It was like an aquarium. 

We did catch bergals, it really was hard not to, but other than the butterfish there didn't seem to be anything around that we didn't already have on both of our life lists.

Once we decided there wasn't much worth staying for we moved to a spot Noah scouted last weekend that had quite a few bass. We got the after dark and didn't call it quits in that spot until fairly late in the morning. We spent much of the night there, aside from a bit of time after we slept hoping to find something better. We may have made a mistake, but to be fair, that was one seductive spot.

It was just full of bass, and a lot of them were big. All night I was being haunted by loud pops and splashes made by fish I couldn't seem to figure out. The variety of bait around wasn't of help. There were, in no particular order, squid, silversides, peanut bunker, sand eels, butterfish, bergals, green crabs, and, most surprisingly, cinderworms. One of the last things I expected to encounter in Cape Cod Bay in the middle of September was a worm hatch. I thought I had completely missed my chance at catching my first worm hatch this year when the RI hatches were done and dusted in June. But there they were, and there were the 15-30lb stripers eating them. And there I was with no ciner worm flies. I eventually managed to jury rig something out of a shad fly and an albie gurgler. I hooked my first ever Cape Cod bass, and lost it. Just as I figured out something, the worm hatch was done.

As Noah and I walked the beech to find a place to set up a very temporary camp he looked down and noticed something startling in the wet stand. Every time we stepped, the sand sparkled a spooky green. It was fitting with the eerie foggy night, one of the darkest I have spent on the shore. As we walked in the misty darkness, tiny dinoflagellates glowed green under our feet.

In the morning some of the reason these fish were so difficult became clear. This spot was far from pressure-less. It gets fairly heavily fished, actually. I got one more brief hookup with a bass in the grayest of grey mornings, and then the fish did nothing but tease us. So we went elsewhere. And that story, my friends, you will have to wait for.