Big Tog Have Arrived On Cape Cod

Ryan Collins

Our 2018 My Fishing Cape Cod group fishing trip season got off to a stellar start this past Friday morning. In fact I was so excited the night before this trip that I could barely sleep!

I woke up well before my alarm went off, and at 5:30AM I met captain Cullen and the MFCC crew at the dock just in time to watch the sunrise.

We cruised out to the tautog grounds under an overcast sky and into a brisk wind. After a 25 minute cruise in Cullen's 27 foot Conch center console, we arrived at the first tautog spot of the day, just as the sun broke through the clouds.

More...

Onboard for this trip we had MFCC members Paul Aldrich, Mario Signore, Mike Leahy, Matt Borrelli and Dick Glockner. Dick had brought a batch of homemade brownies made by his lovely wife Arlene, which were consumed for breakfast.

For the first couple of hours of this trip we did not catch a fish. Captain Cullen moved us from spot to spot, traveling for more than 20 miles in search of a tautog school. Despite the slow start, our MFCC crew remained optimistic, while Cullen scanned his sonar looking for signs of tog.

Eventually around 9:30AM our luck began to change. We pulled up onto a new spot and dropped our baits to the bottom. Mike then reported he felt a bite, and seconds later he set the hook and was on with a fish.

The tautog were here!

The 2 ounce green and orange Togzilla jigs were doing their job. Several of the guys were now reporting consistent bites, and it was not long until Mario hooked up on the starboard side with his first tautog of the trip.

Tautog are ferocious fighters but they are very challenging to hook. We'll talk more about technique, baits, strategy and location in our brand new member-only Tautog Video Tutorial.

I think we were all pretty shocked at how quickly the action had improved. We had gone from catching nothing, to hooking up with tautog every few minutes. It just goes to show that you can never give up, or lose hope during our group trips!

The action was strong for about 2 hours. Before we knew it we had reached our limit of 18 keeper-size tautog, and we had released many smaller ones. Everybody was pumped!

We called it quits around 12 noon, knowing that we would all go home with plenty of beautiful tautog fillets. The bite had been terrific and our crew could not of been any happier. It was a great start to our 2018 My Fishing Cape Cod group trip season.

For more information on how to catch tautog right now in the waters surrounding Cape Cod & the Islands, please click below to access our members-only Tautog Video Tutorial. In this tutorial you will learn about the baits, jigs, equipment, techniques and general locations we fished during this trip.