Hi Folks, There are large amounts stripers around now, schoolies are everywhere and Cape Cod Bay has some bigger fish. The squid, scup and butterfish have moved into Nantucket Sound but hardly any mackerel have shown at all there. The trap fishers in the Sound are having a hard time with seals sitting at the mouth of the traps and preventing any fish from entering. The seals are voracious, eating only the bellies of the fish they prey on. Shareen Davis has an aerial photo taken on her website (http://shareendavisphotography.com/index.cfm?page=2) showing 3 or 4 seals feeding on a school of pogies. If you don’t think they can do the same to schools of striped bass you are mistaken. Hardly any stripers come into Pleasant Bay anymore due to the seals camped out at the mouth of the entrances. Think of seals at the entrances this way: If you walked home from work every day and found a couple grizzly bears on each side of your driveway, would you walk up to the house ? I wonder if the gamefish status proponents consider seal predation in their estimates of declining catches? The macks seem to be in decent supply at the southern sides of Cape Cod Bay and should be there for another week or so according to my friend Steve Ellis. He said there were good amounts of them yesterday north of Sesuit Harbor in Dennis. All of the Cape’s estuaries and embayments are warming rapidly and teeming with life, bait and stripers. Most are on the small side, but lots of action is to be had with small lead head and grub baits. It might be a good idea to not use treble hooks or even bend the barbs down, on the singles, to not hurt the fish needlessly. The tuna should be arriving in a week or two, last year a 74” bluefin was caught 3 miles off the beach at Chatham on June 1st. Also reported that day there were sightings of a decent show of topwater bluefin in Cape Cod Bay. This year according to the NMFS, “Starting April 2, 2011, NMFS adjustments the daily retention limit for private vessels to one school or large school BFT (measuring 27 to less than 59 inches) per vessel per day/trip and for charter/headboat vessels to one school BFT (measuring 27 to less than 47 inches) and one large school BFT (measuring 47 to less than 59 inches) per vessel per day/trip”. The general category boats are allowed two large medium or giants per day until the quota is caught. There is still some uncertainty regarding what the 2011 BFT quota will be. NMFS proposed a controversial rule change of subtracting the estimated discards of the pelagic longline fleet off the top of combined total quota of all categories, in effect drastically reducing the quotas we all fish under, and allocating a huge amount of discard permanently to the wasteful practices of the PLL fleet. We will see what develops as NMFS heard from many unhappy tuna fishers on that one !Charter bookings are going quite strongly now that the sun has started to show itself. Call or email to set aside a day for your group. Some days and tides are better than others ! Don’t wait till the good days are gone !
Hope to see you this year,
Capt. Bruce & “Marilyn S”
