Rock Harbor Comes Alive...
By: Capt. Hap Farrell
Spring is finally upon us and summer is not far behind. The boats in one of New England's largest single charter fleet are getting launched and ready for the season. With the economy and fuel situation being what they are the Captains are a little apprehensive on the over all outcome of this season.
So far it has been a little bit cool with a fair amount of rainy days. The water does not seem like it has warmed up much. The is a fair amount of herring in the runs and there is a large amount of sand eels off shore. A large school of small stripers was found right outside Sesuit Harbor in Dennis on the 29th of April. Some of the fish landed and then released were as big as 24 inches. These fish are most likely sitting off the Brewster Flats out in front of Paine's Creek now. The two areas that have not been that active are the South Sunken Meadow area on the Eastham/Welfleet line and The Crowel Road area half way between The Meadow and Rock Harbor. This is where the bigger fish, keeper size, show up first.
The boats at Rock Harbor are starting to get launched and ready for the upcoming season. We should be able to find some keeper size bass starting on the weekend of the 14th of May. I'm going to start looking in some of the more productive areas around the 10th to the 12th of May. I should find something either between the #3 and #5 cans or over by the cell phone tower. The other spot is about a mile and a half west of the buoy where the Target Ship used to be. Using the umbrella rig on 150 feet of wire should work well to find them then you can try other lure combinations. If you see working birds you are in luck. The fish are working bait on the surface. There is one other spot, that's off the edge of the Brewster Flats up near Paine's Creek. However, more times than not these fish are undersize.
I'll put the results of the looking I do on the contact page on my web site (www.capecodbaycharters.com). I'm going to try to keep it up to date this summer, as well as posting reports on this site.
