This past week has been a little nutty trying to time our fishing trips with the best bite.  It’s been a bit of a challenge compared to last week and the week before, but we still managed to catch 27 bass between 15 and 40 pounds over the past couple of days.

I will admit that I burnt a TON of gas in order to find and catch these fish.  I’m right about on empty which means the next trip to the gas station is going to hurt the wallet a little.  However that is OK with me because sometimes you need to spend a little more time on the move in order to find the fish.

I have a feeling that the offshore winds of the past week or so have pushed a lot of the life offshore just a bit.  The bass, bluefish, bait and even dolphins (which I saw a bunch of yesterday) are still there however they are not as concentrated as they were one week ago.  We found the fish to be more scattered and spread out which means it’s more of a challenge to find and catch ‘em.

Like most of this season the average fish has been towards the larger end of the spectrum.  The 30 plus pound average of 2 weeks ago fell off just a bit, but the fish yesterday averaged 26 pounds which is still pretty good in my book.  I’ll be interested to see what the average fish is during September and October.  In past years we’ve had trips during the fall where the majority of the bass we caught were all over 30 pounds-and that was during seasons when the fishing during July and August was much slower than it has been this year.

Like always I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

The light west and southerly breeze coupled with crystal clear skies did make for incredible on the water conditions over the past couple of days.  It was as flat as a pond for most of the time we were out there.  The sunsets and sunrises were pretty spectacular to say the least.

It’s hard to beat a nice and relaxing sunset during August on the Cape.

I had my Mom and my Dad with me this past week which was very nice.  My sister is out in New York or else we probably would have had her come along as well.  This was my Mom’s first time out on the boat this season so I am glad we were able to put a few nice fish in the boat.

I actually think she might of been good luck because when we found the bass they were biting with a vengeance.  As soon as we got a bait in the water we had bass fighting over it.  I had a couple surface strikes as I was reeling the eel in towards the boat that basically made my heart stop.  Seeing a 30 pounder engulf and eel right off the top never gets old.

All in all it was a great last week of the commercial striped bass season.  Now with the commercial season behind me I’m looking forward to venturing to some new Cape locations and doing some more surf casting like I did back in the spring.  I love fishing from shore because it’s so simple, fun and quiet without any other boats around.

I’m also looking to give bonito and false albies a try later this summer/early fall.  I’ve never put in much time and energy chasing the funny fish, but I think this is the season I finally give it a serious effort.

And with small bluefin tuna being caught with regularity all around Cape Cod, that will also be an option over the next few weeks.  Of course once October rolls around we’ll be out there with the rest of the “googans” tuna wishing for a 1,000 pound fish.

Thanks to my buddy Mazzola we’ll have a more suitable boat to giant tuna fish from this season (as compared to my 21 foot Hydra Sport walkaround) so hopefully we’ll get lucky and bag another 700 pounder.

In the mean time if you’d like some friendly help, advice or tips try posting a question or two in the Member’s Forum.

The forum is really coming along well thanks to you.  It’s turning into a great place to ask any sort of question, no matter how much of a beginner you may be.  It’s also becoming a good place for more seasoned fisher folk to meet other experienced fishermen and swap ideas and intel.

I know that I would not have caught as many bass over the past few weeks as I have without the help of a few guys in the forum.  You guys know who you are so thank you!

Tight lines and take care,

Ryan

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