The Tight Lines Fishing Report is brought to you by Corey and Cam Gammill via Bill Fisher Tackle and Bill Fisher Outfitters. Visit their website, their shop at 127 Orange Street, or give them a call at (508) 228-2261.
Dear Fishermen and Friends,
September is in full swing, we’ve had a stretch of unbelievable weather and fishing continues to be extremely productive for multiple species.
We have a few big stories this week. In a world where anything can happen, Captain Smitty’s crew caught a 4lb Mahi off the Bonito Bar today. That is awesome!
Focus these days tend to be on Albies! Our False Albacore population has ebbed and flowed in recent weeks, but now we have a very strong population with a lot of active fish! If you are primarily targeting these speedsters though, you should have some luck. Great Point seems to hold the best concentration, certainly from the beach. The inside of the galls and the rip at the point have held a lot of fish as well for boat fishermen. We are seeing huge pods of fish on the east side of the Island and expect these fish to be on The south side any day now. There are blitzes that are staying up for minutes on end. Its been a pretty fun show.
The other big story this week is the bluefish. The size of the bluefish that we are catching are outstanding. I can say with confidence that on average our Bluefish are right around 8-10 lbs and it has not been uncommon to catch 15 pounders. Captain Bill Toelstedt, who has fished our local waters for 25 years and seen a lot, was with a longtime client, Andrew Paul and he caught the biggest bluefish Bill has ever seen. It easily weighed in excess of 20 pounds. Luckily, she was released to continue to grow.
What’s even more fun is how aggressive these big fish are. The come barreling out of the water and explode on your plug. The best fishing has been on the east side of the Island in 20-30 feet of water from a boat. These fish are also on the south side of the Island as well. These areas are where we are seeing big concentrations of fish. These fish will push off the beach so do not be shy to target them in similar locations. We are also seeing some smaller fish in off of Eel Point now and plenty of smaller fish on the western edges.
Striped Bass continue to push back into our inshore waters. From a boat, find some moving water. The edges to the east have all been productive as has all of the water to the east end. In fact, we had some of our most productive bass fishing of the season over the last few days in the edges. From the beach, I had a friend fishing Eel Point this week and they were in the middle of a blitz of Striped Bass. I have not heard of too many reports from the South Shore, but I am confident that these fish are there and will continue to increase in numbers in the coming weeks.
Generally, in this report we focus on inshore fishing. There is a reason for this is that we like to provide information to the readers that I feel is useful and attainable. Fishing Offshore (30+ miles away from land) from Nantucket is extremely productive and amazingly fun. This summer, we have had an incredible Bluefin Tuna fishery. Mostly the fish being caught are smaller fish, which are a total riot and very easy to release. The bite started in June down at the Dump, which sits south west of Nantucket. Anglers were catching a handful of fish when the conditions lined up. This was a consistent bite for about a month. The bite then turned back on to the east of Nantucket about two weeks ago with a similar class of fish. I had the pleasure of heading east this week and was lucky enough to land 14 fish with some great friends. In my opinion, that was a once in a lifetime day! Jonas Baker, from Slip 14, holds an awesome annual called the Bluefin Blast, which is a catch and release tournament for Bluefin. This was held this past Saturday and in total almost 600 fish were caught in one day, with the leading boat catching 50+ fish and most boats catching between 20-30 fish. This is truly incredible. And to know most of those fish were released to continue their journey is pretty awesome.
Go enjoy our amazing and diverse fishery! It’s super fun right now and there is a ton of action. Tight Lines.