Often come the middle of July we start talking about the doldrums…the bass have slowed and no bonito yet, but this year, we still have plenty of bass in our fishery and we have some bonito darting around. Our fishery has plenty of bait and plenty of life in it, which means there are plenty of fish. In short, our fishery right now is incredibly fun with lots of opportunity to bend a rod.

 

As we have spoken about before, many of our squid got lucky and laid their mops and hatched before the squid boats started beating up the bottom down south. This is good news as we still have tons of squid in our edges and the fish are feasting. Isn’t it amazing, when there is food, there is fish.

 

From the boat, we continue to see more and more people catch a ton of fluke. Fluke fishing and sea bass fishing has become a key piece of this fishery. They are plentiful, provide dinner fare, and are fun to catch. Much of the great fluke and sea bass fishing is taking place on the east side of the island, although the west side has huge moving schools of sea bass that are sitting under birds south of muskeget.

 

From the boat there are still plenty of stripers as well. Perhaps the most consistent fishing for big fish is off of the monomoy shoals. This might seem like a distance but it is a straight shot from the harbor across the sound. There are also plenty of bass under the birds west and in the western edges and in old man and some of the southern edges. There are plenty of blues down there as well. Fishermen have been focusing on anything with a single hook, to make extraction easier. We also highly recommend a surface lure as it makes for an incredible visual experience. This continues to be one of the best bass catching years in recent memory.

The one major negative is that most of this “life” is concentrated on the south/west side of the island and some of our go-to fisheries such as great point and the eastern shoreline are not fishing well. The sand eels have filled into both of these areas, but the big reason, (we guess) that neither fishery has taken off is the overall decline in bluefish over the last 3-4 years and the abundance of bait south of the island. So most of the blues that we have around the island are in the southeastern and the southwestern edges, leaving great point, fairly barren.

 

Beach guys continue to do well and we continue to hear about more and more blues getting caught, specifically around the south shore from Miacomet Beach east. Dionis also has smaller blues if that is of easier access. As for bass, there are still a ton being caught, during the day and at night. More of the bigger fish are being caught at nighttime. But we continue to hear stories of fish caught right in the surf during the middle of the day. They are feeding on sand crabs.

 

As for the bonito and offshore, there have been over a dozen bones reported and while most have been caught where sand eels are thick, they are still not thick enough to target. It is more get lucky as you fish under a pile of turns. They are sure to fill in though in the next two weeks.

 

Offshore continues to be a mixed bag, down south has some marlin and tuna and everyone keeps crossing their fingers that the bluefin bit we wait for every year will explode, we will find out. Just a hurry up and wait game right now. Out to the east, the bluefin bite off of chatham, while not awesome yet, is getting a bit more consistent. There have been a few fish caught on the surface but most of the guys are dropping Mackeral down and some fish caught on the troll.

 

No matter whether you are a beach or boat person, our fishing right now is in great shape with lots of fish to catch and if you push to Monomoy or to the East on a boat the bass are getting bigger and bigger. It has been a long time since fishing has been this good this time of year, go take advantage of it and wet a line and come tell us a story.