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Silas and Dan with a beautiful early season striped bass.
Yesterday was an awesome day and a great cap to an incredible first week of the striped bass fishing season here on Cape Cod.
I met Silas and Dan at 4AM on Saturday with the hopes of jigging up some live mackerel and then live lining them inside Cape Cod Bay for stripers. We got off to a rough start when I found out that the guys weren’t able to find anywhere to grab a coffee. They were troopers though and stuck out the entire trip caffeine free.
The air was a bit on the nippy side before the sun came up, but the wind was calm and the skies were clear. We were treated to a great sunrise and an unreal mackerel bite! As soon as the sabiki rigs went into the water the macks latched on like they had nothing to lose. It only took us maybe 25 minutes of jigging to fill up the live well.
With plenty of macks in the boat we started searching around for some bass. There’s been a ton of fish moving through the Canal as of late with some of the bass well above the 25 pound mark. Sometimes when this happens certain areas inside the Bay light up with life. I was secretly hoping and thinking that this may have been the case yesterday.
Dan with the first bass of the day.
Unfortunately the areas I had hoped would have some big bass were devoid of life. No big deal though, when one spot fails to produce just move right on to the next one.
At around 7AM we pulled in to the same area that I had fished earlier in the week with Josh. Josh and I had been treated to some awesome action on fish up to 35 inches so I was really hoping that those nice bass would still be around. Fortunately they were and on the second pass Dan hooked up. Fish on!
Dan’s fish was not a monster but it certainly was a great start to the morning. Dan and Silas were pumped and so was I – the bass were here.
The guys really caught on with the live mackerel technique. Live lining macks for bass is one of the most fun ways of fishing in my book.
We started out live lining the mackerel with weight, but when the wind died we removed the weight and let the macks swim freely. When we did this the bass started chasing the mackerel up to the surface and put on quite the show. One of our macks would be non-nonchalantly cruising on the surface when out of nowhere SMACK! a nice bass would gobble him up.
Silas and Dan with one of the biggest bass of the day – a nice 15 pounder.
The action for Silas and Dan only improved as the day progressed. After putting around 10 fish in the boat we made a quick run out to deep water to jig up some more macks. Again it only took maybe 25 minutes to re-fill the tanks. I’m really amazed by the incredible amount of mackerel present right now. Hopefully they will stick around for the entire summer!
With a fresh supply of mackerel we got right back to the bass fishing. The action this time around was even better than before. By now it was around 11AM, sunny, hot and flat calm. Perfect conditions for us but not always perfect conditions for bass fishing. However the stripers only became more aggressive as the sun climbed higher in the sky.
At one point we had a fish on every drift we made. I’ll be sure to remember trips like these when the bass aren’t so cooperative later this season!
Big thanks to both Silas and Dan for coming fishing. You guys were a great crew and a lot of fun to fish with!
Final tally for the day was around 20 keepers. I’d guess that if we hooked every fish that bit we would of had around 40 fish. This is hands down some of the best spring time action I have ever been a part of! For more information on the trip, areas fished and techniques used click here.