BOSTON HARBOR & SOUTH SHORE-Stripers
The inner-harbor bays are inundated with adult silversides. Regardless of where you choose to fish be it Hingham, Quincy or Boston, swirling stripers are pushing this bait fish to the surface, attracting the birds and of course the fly fishers. Right now, 20-60 fish mornings are common. However, what is missing are the larger bass. Typically these fish move into our area by mid-June. While the surface action if awesome for school bass, everyone in the harbor is finding few big bass to date. One reason is the amount of bait on Stellwagen and on the shoals of the Cape. The report from Billingsgate is that conventional trolling, off the edge of the shoals, is producing well for big bass while the shoal water, loaded with sand eels and silversides, is producing few big fish.
On Saturday, long-time client Roger Thuot of Petersham, MA toughed-out the botched weather forecast—by mid-morning we were hiding in the lee of the islands from the 30 knot winds. Nevertheless, the early morning outgoing tide in Quincy bay fished well with numbers of bass between 20 and 26 inches feeding on silversides. Due to the wind, Roger opted to fish light-tackle using 3/8 oz jig-heads and soft-plastics. His second fish was a 33 inch keeper bass—a surprise fish for current circumstances. Last year at this time, Roger's best bass was a fat, 39 inch, 21 pound linesider—hopefully they will reach Boston in numbers soon.
On Sunday both the B-Fast and the Bay-Fly fished the harbor finding bass surface feeding in Quincy and Boston's inner-harbor. With the wind down some what, B.J. Morgan of Medford on the Bay Fly did well with the T-3 fishing chartreuse Half & Halfs on 400 grain DepthCharge line.—good silverside attractor patters. Light-spinning gear was equally effective using Fin-S soft-plastics on jug-heads and Texas-rigged soft-plastic on the surface. Both boat hooked and released 20-30 school bass with none over 27 inches.
By mid-week with its SW summer wind pattern, calm seas and raging heat-wave, we were able to fish both the inner-harbor bays and the outer harbor ledges and promontories of Boston and Minot's ledge on the South Shore. Dean Romano of Framingham, MA had a banner day releasing 20+ bass using 2/0 chartreuse Half & Halfs and keeping 2 small blues for the table—the blues were in the inner-harbor; rarely in our area in June.
Strakely's foam-head poppers and Gartside's gurglers also produced well fished on floating Wonderline. At mid-morning, we moved to fish structure on the ledges of the outer harbor and South Shore on Minot's ledge. Dean did well fishing the fishing the pocket water and wash of the rock, casting both forward and back casting where the wind dictated, and he was rewarded with another 10+ stripers on the fly—here again no keeper bass.
Capt. Mike Bartlett
B-Fast Charters
www,bfastcharters.com
