Fishing Cape Cod Report | July 1st

We caught our first bluefish from the boat today on a live tinker mackerel.

Today was a great start to the month of July.

I had Jerry, Jim and Nichole with me this morning. They had been reading all the positive Cape Cod fishing reports of the last few weeks and were hoping that the solid action would continue.

I had to make a last second audible at 3:30AM when I realized that the chosen boat ramp was un-launchable due to the extreme, nearly full moon, low tide. I made a call to Jerry and had the crew meet me at the Sandwich Marina, which is one of the best boat ramps on Cape Cod.

Luckily we had just enough water to work with and were able to squeeze the boat into the ocean. Phew! Obstacle #1 of the day conquered.

The next challenge was to find live mackerel. We could have dragged tubes all day but I had been hearing about a hot mackerel bite going on in certain, relatively small areas throughout Cape Cod Bay. During my last trip we worked very hard to scrounge up just 8 tinker mackerel, so I was really hoping that we would have better luck with the macks during this trip.

Two of my good buddies Jason Mazzola and Todd Baranowski had been on the water since 3AM in Mazzola’s boat. I made a phone call and they filled me in that they had so far not been able to find any mackerel. However they did have tons of small bait fish around their boat.

We decided to wait it out until sunrise and wouldn’t you know, as soon as it started to get bright the tinker mackerel came through in hordes!

We were able to jig up around 50 tinkers in less than 15 minutes. The action was just as fast and furious as it was back in early May. I can’t believe how good the mack bite was this morning – unfortunately the action seems to be concentrated in just a few specific areas instead of throughout the entire Bay as it was a few weeks back.

Big thanks to Mazzola and Todd for helping us load up on the macks.

Can’t beat a live well full of tinker mackerel when fishing Cape Cod Bay.

Click here to check out the areas producing macks right now in Cape Cod Bay.

We now had a chock full live well before sunrise which was awesome. We pulled in the sabiki rigs, made a quick run and broke out the live mackerel spinning gear.

The plan was to drift with the macks as we have been this entire season. The first couple of drifts were a little slow with a few swings and misses but at around 6:00AM the place lit up with striped bass.

Jim was the first to hook up with a healthy 37 incher. The bass inhaled the mack and the hook so the guys figured why not take it home for dinner. Good start!

We continued our drift over a new terrain with an undulated bottom that was holding a lot of life. There were sand eels all over the bottom and I could see the arcs of orange (which were stripers) cruising amongst the sand eels. We had hit the mother load, virtually out of nowhere and completely unexpected.

For the next 40 minutes we danced around the boat with double hook ups, crossed lines and bass flopping around on deck.

Mazzola and Todd were doing the same right next to us (and actually ended up out-fishing us!). We had a nice stretch of water full of fish all to ourselves which was unexpected considering it was a Sunday in July.

Todd battles a nice one aboard Mazzola’s boat the “Sue-Sea-Q”

Mazzola and Todd were fishing the Cape Cod 5000 Tournament and were hoping to snag a couple fat 36 inchers to weigh in. The way the tourney works is the two heaviest fish 36 inches and under win. Their heaviest two fish ended up weighing in at 34.1 pounds, which got them a 3rd place prize-not bad!

All the proceeds from the Cape Cod 5000 benefit local charities like Cape Cod Child Development which is really great.

Between the two boats we landed close to 40 bass, the vast majority of them keepers in the 32-38 inch range. Nothing ridiculously humongous but good solid action and real fun fishing. I’m really enjoying this live mackerel bite, which is really showing no signs at all of slowing up.

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So far the month of July is off to a phenomenal start. Hopefully you are able to find some nice fish this Fourth of July week as well.

Click here for more information on the areas in Cape Cod Bay producing good mackerel and striped bass fishing.

Tight lines everyone and Happy Fourth!

Ryan