Cape Cod Dash

Noah and I went to the Cape last weekend. We were there for a night, a day, and a night. The fishing was OK, but then we really had very little direction and were just rolling with the punches so we could have done better had we really known what we were going to do.

We got there after dark. The tide wasn't great when we got there but we gave it a shot anyway and Noah was rewarded with a good little fish on a bucktail.

We slept through the dead bite part of the tide and out for the pre-dawn low outgoing bite. That was a little more productive. I fished a black striper dragon, 4/0, on a slow, twitchy swing where a creek poured out onto the beach front. The fish took in sporadic bursts. I got a couple decent ones, but nothing especially impressive.

We headed south shortly after the sunrise hoping to find tunoids and mackerel: albies, bonito, king mackerel, anything would do. I saw two kings jump. That was it. But there were a few black seabass busting. Seabass are a grouper species. It certainly seems uncharacteristic of a grouper to bust on the surface, but these guys do sometimes. 

We wandered around a bit trying to catch seabass, hoping king mackerel would start to feed harder, and checking out sea turtles. There were two of them in this particular bay. They were very shy and we never got close to them to see what species they were or exactly what size, either, but they were clearly substantial animals. Then, inshore, mayhem ensued. Small bluefish found massive schools of bay anchovies. The noise was hellacious, and the blitz long lasting. We took a bunch of these bluefish intending to eat them, but they ended up being shark bait instead. More on that shortly.

As the blitz slowed I had already moved on and was targeting bottom fish, which ended up being productive. 

We could probably have hammered the porgies for a few more hours, but the potential for new species in other areas made us want to move, so we did. Unsuccessfully, actually. We couldn't find anything new in a spot we thought going into the trip would be pretty much a sure bet. News flash: there's no such thing as a sure bet in fishing, and very few other parts of life either. 

Instead of plying new waters again, we went to a familiar spot and targeted a familiar species. Schoolie bass fed vigorously on silversides and were very obliging if you cast into the breaking fish. The wind made it tricky, but we caught a few. The sky was filled with birds and the water was filled with fish. It was a good show that never gets old. Never.

Eventually our day was drawing to a close and we went looking for sharks. We chose a likely south shore beach, rigged up one big rod, chopped up up bluefish, and hoped we would encounter a monster. For maximum distance I paddled the bait out in the kayak. An exceedingly creepy thing to do, only because we were targeting sharks. Had I been paddling out there to catch stripers I could care less, but knowing the purpose of the exercise was to catch a shark? That made it spooky for me. I bailed the bait and led over the side and hauled ass back to shore, trying to seem as unlike a seal as I could.

No, we weren't targeting the great whites that have become quite common on the cape. Or query were smaller, more benign sharks.

With the big bait out we set some rods out with smaller rigs for dogfish. What we didn't realize was that the only way we'd actually get dogfish was by fishing the beach lip. They were working the wash, which wasn't much more than a foot or two deep here, just like the northern kingfish we had found here the year before during the day. These were little smooth dogfish, or, more accurately, dusky smooth-hound. Mustelus canis.

 Dogfish are weird little fish. Heck, all sharks are weird fish. Eyelids. Rough skin. Cartilage. Gill slits. They're just weird. These scrawny little smooth dogfish were some of the oddest fish I'd ever caught. I desperately wanted to get one on the fly, and I very nearly did. I had half a dozen takes. But I just kept missing them, so I'll have to settle for the one I got on a chunk of bluefish.

Eventually we settled in for a long, cold night, hoping to be awakened by the screaming drag that would signify that the big bait had been taken by a much bigger, more impressive shark. It never happened. We drove away the next morning having caught a lot of fish on the Cape, but definitely feeling a little unfulfilled. We have unfinished business here.