It was time again for the annual June Cape Cod trip. The spring run on the Hudson was good, but this is saltwater...a whole different ballgame. My buddy Brian and I tow his boat, the Salty Minnow, a 19' center console Key West out to Dennis a couple times every year, but June is always the trip we most anticipate. This year our buddy Scotty joined us, braving the salt spray despite a broken foot.
We fished the small waters friday for small schoolies, and it was pretty inconsistent, with some spots being loaded with little guys, other spots being barren.
Saturday it was time for light tackle in big water. We headed over to our favorite spot and after a good two hours of searching, we found fish relating to the bait...and were they ever aggressive! Every time we motored up to the up to the school, we would triple up. Fish were nice sized too, averaging about 27", but enough 30"+ fish to keep it interesting on the light freshwater gear we use. It was an amazing day with an impossible number of fish caught and the weather was unbeatable too.
Brian, with the biggest of the day, a nice fatty 38.5" fish.
Sunday it was time for Tuna. With light winds in the forcast, we made the long run offshore. We found plenty of bait but the tuna would not show. Plenty of whales though. And some accidental stripers too. They were constantly on our tuna baits.
even got my new pb, this fat 26lb 39.5" momma (which wouldn't stop kicking for the pic, hence the constipated look on my face:bluegrin
At that point, we had enough of the lack of tunafish, so we headed back toward shore. We did come upon two schools of tuna on the way back in. One was a school of 6 or so Buick sized bluefins that just left us in awe. Of course it doesn't help when someone goes to throw a tuna popper at them and the line snaps when the leader knot catches in the guides.
DOH!!! buh bye $15 lure.:dizzy: Glad it wasn't my lure:redbiggrin:
So off we go in search of legal stripers. Headed to the nearest sandy drop off, and wouldn't ya know, but it was loaded with stripers. Really solid fish too. They were averaging around 30", but with lots of 33"-37" fish thrown in. Here we go again.
A nice blue even decided to make an appearance.
After all the striper catching, we had one more morning before it was back to home, so Scotty took his girlfriend with us, and we all got into a ton of stripers. All four of us hooked up at once 12 times total monday morning. At times there were fish coming up to bait completely around the boat
my sand papered thumb
We called it a day at 10 and headed bay to NY. Overall it was the most amazing weekend of fishing of my entire life. Sat, Sun, and Mon were all the greatest single days of fishing I have ever seen. I will not even throw numbers out here in terms of fish caught just because they are not believable.
We even had fish going berserk on poppers. I took some videos of the stripers crashing bait and a pencil popper that I will post at a later time.