This Saturday May 18 marks the 8th annual Cheeky Schoolie Tournament. The Cheeky Tournament is held on Cape Cod, and it's the largest fly fishing tournament in the world!
I will be fly fishing Cheeky with my buddy and MFCC member Doug Blanchard. This will be our third year in a row fishing the Cheeky Tournament.
Doug and I caught fish during the 2017 and 2018 Cheeky Tournaments, but they were too small to get us on the leaderboard.
That's why this year I decided to devote some time to "pre-fishing" in an effort to find some bigger fish!
Black sea bass season opens this Saturday May 18th. I know many of you have been waiting all year for the start of sea bass season, and I'm pumped it's finally here!
Not only are black sea bass some of the best tasting fish we have here on Cape, but they are also a very fun fish to catch when using light tackle.
Whether you are looking to put fresh fish on the table, or just want to get your kids into some fast action, then black sea bass is for you. In this article I'll share with you 5 tips for catching sea bass when the season opens up this Sunday.
Some awfully big scup have arrived on Cape Cod! Back on Thursday May 9th my good friend Jason Mazzola and I had a blast catching keeper-size scup and tautog.
Yes it's true that most anglers right now have striped bass fever, but scup and tautog fishing is a great change of pace, and a ton of fun once you get into a hot bite!
In this post I'll recap my latest fishing experience targeting scup and tog. In addition I'll share with you helpful tips and advice, plus a 15 minute long video about catching big scup and blackfish right now on Cape.
Hello and welcome to the inaugural episode of the 2019 My Fishing Cape Cod podcast.
Each week throughout the rest of the fishing season, we will be publishing a new weekly fishing report podcast here on the website.
My goal will be to have these podcasts ready for you on Friday afternoons, just in time for the weekend. The goal of today's podcast is to introduce you to our lineup of guests for the 2019 season.
We have a great crew for this year's podcast who will be sharing updates on the fishing from the canal to Provincetown, and many places in between.
I was quite surprised to find out that My Fishing Cape Cod member Jordan Brainson had caught a bluefish this past Saturday afternoon on May 4!
Earlier in the day I had chatted with Jordan at the MFCC meetup at Fishermen's View Restaurant, before he left to go fishing. I figured he would have a good chance with stripers - I definitely didn't expect to hear about bluefish.
Then on Monday May 5th I received a photo of another bluefish, this one caught by Trevor Anderson. So while there may not yet be huge schools of bluefish around, a few have already arrived.
The rest of this post will provide more information about the bluefish, as well as a recap of what our members have been catching and encountering this week here on Cape Cod.
I arrived at the dock at 5:45 as my fellow MFCC crew members were strolling toward Capt. Cullen’s boat. I also saw Ryan getting ready to launch his kayak. He wouldn’t be joining us today, but it was good seeing him after a long winter.
After the customary greetings, all were on board and our Tautog trip began.
We cleared the dock and went full throttle into the early morning mist. The cool temperatures of early May on Cape Cod were evident as everyone pulled up their hoods and bundled up tight in the 40-degree temps. With wind and sea spray stinging our faces, Cullen guided the boat to his chosen spot.
My Fishing Cape Codders are consistently catching schoolie striped bass from Nantucket Sound, all the way north to Duxbury, MA.
The best action is coming from the bays, harbors and inlets of Buzzard's Bay and the Sounds, but schoolie stripers are now even feeding and being caught along the beaches of Cape Cod Bay.
I haven't personally been able to do much fishing the past few days, but I have been following the posts here on MFCC from our members inside our private forum.
The rest of this post will provide a recap of what our members have been catching and encountering.
For the past few years we've run a striped bass derby here on My Fishing Cape Cod. The derby has been a lot of fun!
However, for the 2019 season I have a new idea for a fishing competition that I think will be even more exciting and fun than the derby.
"MFCC Challenges" will be a new type of fishing competition for members of My Fishing Cape Cod. At least once per month I will post a new challenge, and the first member of My Fishing Cape Cod to complete the challenge will win whatever prize is up for grabs.
The rest of this blog post will explain more about MFCC Challenges, how they will work, who can win, and what prizes are up for grabs.
With the Cape Cod saltwater fishing season about to kick-off, this will be the last "Costa Rica Saturday" blog post for quite some time.
However, I'm going to continue blogging about Costa Rica, but over at MFCC's new "sister website" https://arenaalta.com.
Lauren and I are helping Costa Rica's Arena Alta Wildlife Village & Reserve with their online marketing. We haven't purchased property yet at Arena Alta (which is right next to the beach where I do all my fishing in Costa Rica) but we are saving up our pennies and seriously thinking about it. Definitely check out the Arena Alta website and let me know what you think!
This past winter my wife Lauren and I guided two awesome groups of MFCC anglers and their wives in Costa Rica. We explored the jungle together, saw sloths and monkeys, and of course went fishing!
If you'd like to learn more about the area of Costa Rica we visited, then please head over to https://arenaalta.com.
The fishing from the beach in the days leading up to this kayak trip had been unusually slow. However, when I woke up on the morning of February 4th 2019, I saw huge topwater explosions about a mile offshore.
I'm happy to report I caught my first striped bass of the 2019 season this past Wednesday afternoon April 17th!
I was fishing from my kayak on Cape Cod and was very surprised to find that one of the stripers was covered in sea lice.
Sea lice are marine external parasites that feed on the mucus, epidermal tissue, and blood of host marine fish. Sea lice often "hitch a ride" on the skin of striped bass which have been swimming in the open ocean.
This Saturday April 20th from 8am-2pm, the Goose Hummock will be hosting the kid's fishing festival at Cliff Pond in Brewster, MA.
I also plan on attending and will be at Cliff Pond all day. This fishing festival will be a wonderful opportunity to learn how to fish!
The crew from the Goose Hummock Shops will be supplying 24 rods and reels, rigged up and ready for anyone in attendance to use! In addition there will by fly fishing instruction and kayaks available.
Welcome to another edition of "Costa Rica Saturday," a weekly series that will continue for the month of April.
This past winter my life Lauren and I guided two groups of anglers and their wives from the USA in Costa Rica. We explored the jungle, saw sloths and monkeys, and went fishing!
We've been going to Costa Rica since 2015, yet one thing I had never done before was go kayak fishing in Costa Rica.
For most of my fishing life I have been obsessed with striped bass. However in recent years I have really enjoyed branching out and fishing for other species.
One species of fish which I find super fun to target is the tautog (also called blackfish). Tautog are extremely strong and fight great. They are a challenge to find and hook and are also wonderful to eat.
In my opinion, the simplest way to catch tautog is to use a Togzilla jig. These jigs are specially made to present a crab (one of the tautog's favorite prey items) right on the bottom amongst the rocks and boulders where tautog call home.
Starting in June, our 2019 group trips will be fishing striper hot spots in Buzzard's Bay, Cape Cod Bay, off the Outer Cape and in the rips of Monomoy.
Over the past four years our crews have caught bass of up to 48 inches on lures and live bait.
I have personally experienced some of the best striper trips of my entire life while fishing onboard our group trips!
