Changes in the Bay...
By: Capt. Hap Farrell
This is the time of the season when the habits and locations of the striped bass change a bit. For the last two weeks the most active body of fish nearest Rock Harbor has been to the west of the old Target Ship. This area is called the New Grounds. There are also schools of bass off the north edge of Billingsgate Shoals in the deep water from northwest of the #1 can up to the area off Great Island or called The Square. These fish have been a bit more finicky and don't hit as readily. There has not been any real activity in on Stony Bar or any of the Rock Piles as of late. I think this will change soon.
Right now it seems the stripers are mainly feeding off the abundant sand eels plus small bait fish found in the Bay. What first brought them into the Bay was the herring, however, most of them have made it up the runs. There are still some that are late arrivals and with the amount of fish in the Bay they most likely will not make it. What will really spice things up is when and if the squid arrive. Some years we get just a small amount in the Bay, other years we get slammed with them. Lets hope we get slammed with squid. If so, the hootchie will be the lure of choice and man, will they work well.
I've been checking up in by the #3 and #5 cans and along the Eastham shore when I get a chance. So far, I've not found much. One of the other captains did report he found a few small schools of small fish on the Rock Pile area but that was just one day. Because of this early and warm spring we keep thinking it is later into this season than it really is. So we think the fish should be active in areas they really wont be for a while longer. This last Tuesday when I was in there I recorded lots of bait in the area of Stony Bar and up towards Welfleet Harbor. The fish will find this bait and when they do all hell should break loose.
I had an old friend of mine named Jimmy Rainey out on the half day this last Tuesday. He used to bass fish commercially many years ago. Then it was not unusual to land stripers in the 30 to 40 pound range. Then you were doing well to get 25 cents per pound. On this trip we used lead core line trolling an umbrella rig. We got two small bass every time we went tight. One of these bass was dinner size. Twenty Eight and a quarter inches, perfect eating size. I hope the big fish will show up soon.
