Hi Folks,The Northeast wind finally decided to lay down. I had a tuna charter for Friday, but decided to cancell at the last minute at 4 am, because the wind was still up at the buoys. It turned out to be a good decision because the wind stayed up all day throughout the afternoon. I was pretty jazzed up to go too ! There was some decent bluefin tuna caught to the east of Chatham last weekend and many folks besides myself were just itching to go catch some. Saturday, the winds had subsided enough to get out, but I had a bass charter scheduled for that morning, so I couldn't go. Judging by the surface temperature maps, there seemed to be some cool waters on the grounds anyway. Yesterday on the radio, I heard of one fish in the 45 inch size taken on the waters east of Chatham and my friend told me of another of the same size east of Stellwagon. I am sure there were more, but those are the only ones I had heard of firsthand.
We did do well on the striped bass yesterday though. Even though we didn't limit out, we had 10 or 11 nice stripers up to 39 inches and a handful of blues. It was nice to find a few. On the way down from Chatham, the water temperature was a crisp 54.5 degrees. At the east tip of Monomoy, at Bears'es Shoals, it had warmed to 56, but it didn't get to over 58 until after I had gone around the end of the island and towards Handkercheif Shoals. Stonehorse shoals looked dead. We fished the area at the tip of Monomoy Island for the first hour and a half of the trip for just 1 short bass and a bunch of small blues. There were birds working Juro's "Big Girl" rip right at the shoreline, but it was small blues of about 2 and 3 pound sizes. I also looked around on Handkerchief up the the west a bit because there were high flying gulls spread all over a wide area there. These gulls are looking for individual squid that are pushed to the surface by roaming bass. It wasn't really happening yet, but my feeling is that its going to bust open on a squid bite there real soon. I have bass trips scheduled for all of next week, so I think a few pounds of frozen squid will be in the cooler ! I did hear some complaining about more blues than bass on the radio though, so beware. I expect the water temperatures will rise a few degrees as things settle down after that northeast wind. I expect a lot more tuna action, but with more subdued reports. Last week everyone was all excited, but now you will see folks a lot more "cozy" with their information ! I believe that with the speed of the internet and the fact that many bait shops, outfitters and magazines are now quoting fishing reports as a way to boost interest and business, the fact is that we now can really quickly put more boats on an area than that area can support and therefore ruin the fishing or make it a lot harder for all there.
Good fishing to you,
Bruce & "Marilyn S"
