Cape Cod 2009
Striper blues
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Cape Cod Striper blues
Made my first trip to fish for stripers in Cape Cod. Having never fished for them and having wanted to for many years, I was excited to go. I flew to Boston and caught the cape air shuttle to Hyannis. My friend and CCO trip host Dan Pangaldi and his friend Jeff Mcmahon picked me up in Hyannis and we traveled to our inn located in West Harwich.
We fished out of Provincetown three days because the bite was hot and the stripers large. The first day was the best fishing day for numbers and size. I caught two 17 lb fish and several between 10-16 lbs on sand eel imitations. Basicall olive and white clousers, heavily weighted. This is tough fishing-full sinking lines and strong fish brought up from the deep. The amount of sand eels off of the area around Race Roint was staggering. Diving birds everywhere and plenty of busting stripers and blue fish. We also got into a hot topwater bite 2 evenings—it’s pretty awesome to see 10-20 lb fish busting a gurgler!
Out of P-town we also saw a school of bluefin tuna busting bait but they were moving too fast for us. Plus we did not have the gear needed for 100+ lb tuna. We also saw 2 huge 20+ foot basking sharks at close range-very cool. Plenty of
birds and a few seals there too.
The last two days we spent fishing the flats in Monomoy and Barnstable. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate and we had
heavy clouds and some rain which made sight fishing tough. Still we caught fish on the flats and I saw the potential of Momomoy for incredible flats fishing. When the sun did pop out briefly one day, the flats lit up like those in the Bahamas--with beautiful colors and hard packed sand. With sunny weather we would have seen so many more fish. It's a beautiful area with great wading opportunities and plenty of fish. One evening we were sight fishing the flats at 6pm under heavy clouds! We set up on the outside of a creek channel to intercept the fish coming out on a falling tide. We could barely make out the schools coming at us but were able to land a couple in the failing light. And best of all no one was around.
What a great trip! Great fishing, great seafood dinners and time spent sipping cold ones with good friends talking about fishing.
