Fishing the Cape Cod Canal after dark can be a fantastic and sometimes downright spooky undertaking. There’s definitely no scarcity of intriguing characters, critters and bizarre noises across the rip-rap at night. Add a few good Cape Cod Canal ghost stories into the mix (which there are plenty of believe me) and it’s pretty easy to get the heebie jeebies.
Still if you are looking to radically improve your chances of reeling in a colossal bass fishing from shore, then hitting the Cape Cod Canal after dark may well be for you.
The Canal starts to crank out big striped bass at night with the entrance of the first keeper-size stripers. Usually by Memorial Day large fish have settled in to the Canal. Most anglers choose to toss topwater plugs in the morning at this time of the year, however many keeper stripers are taken off the bottom after dark.
Late May/early June is when the night bite really turns on. At this point in the young season, night time excursions are often a hit or miss proposition as huge schools of stripers travel via the land cut straight into Cape Cod Bay. To put it another way, it’s possible you’ll hook big fish one evening and then not register a single bite the next. Then as if out of nowhere the next wave of large bass pushes in through Buzzard’s Bay and the night fishing starts to produce once more.
By July the night bite tends to become a bit more dependable. The greater part of the striped bass population has settled into their summertime haunts, which generally makes Canal fishing a touch less hit and miss. It is highly feasible to land significant stripers each night of the week, if of course you can zone in on the most productive fishing spots.
Nearly all of the big bass that are hooked in the evening are taken on...[Join for $1 to access the full article]