Matt Leite
Every year, during the first week of August, my family and I vacation at Bourne Scenic Park on the Cape Cod Canal.
I had a chip on my shoulder going into this particular trip. Let me explain...
A couple of weeks earlier, I spent 7-days at the canal and fished for approximately 60-HOURS with nothing to show for it. I did not want a repeat of that disaster.
More...
While preparing for this trip, I ran through my normal checklist of gear and information I needed to gather. I noticed that two things that Mother Nature was going to provide for me during the week I would be staying at Bourne Scenic Park.
I figured these two natural events could really amp up the bite, which made me very excited to get out there and wet a line. Here are the two natural events I thought would help my odds of success at the Canal:
- Breaking Tide
"Breaking tides" as they are commonly called by canal fishermen, occur when the current turns east at daybreak. This the flood or incoming tide at the canal. The current is just starting to move from Buzzard's Bay into Cape Cod Bay.
- New Moon
The "New Moon" is the phase of the moon when it is in conjunction with the sun and invisible from earth, or shortly thereafter when it appears as a slender crescent. When the moon is full or new, the gravitational pull of the moon and sun are combined. At these times, the high tides are very high and the low tides are very low. These are known as Spring tides and they are especially strong, and have nothing to do with the season Spring.
The night before I left for camp, I secured my canal bike and rods to their respective racks so that everything would be ready to rock when the very "unpleasant" 2:00am alarm went off.
I tend to label the alarms on my phone specifically for fishing trips...
I left home at 2:30am and made the 90-minute drive to Bourne.
It was still dark when I finally got down the rip-rap and opened the bail for my first cast. The air and water were quiet, with only a few headlamps glowing in the area. On my fourth cast I listened to the line fly off the spool before my jig splashed down on the water.
I worked the jig for a few seconds and then, WHAM, my rod doubled over and I was on! The sound of my drag caught the attention of an angler biking by. We both knew it was a good fish. A few minutes of back-and-forth ensued before I was able to guide the fish up onto the weed covered rocks. That's when I laid eyes on a beautiful striped bass in the 30-pound range.
​That morning I pulled 8 stripers from the canal on 5 different lures in about 2 hours.
It kicked off what turned out to be the best week I've had at the canal in my brief two years of "serious" fishing.
I was skunked just once in 6 days and landed fish between 20-30 pounds during almost every outing.
​It was one of those rare stretches when everything seemed to work. I did lose fish (including a monster bass that would have undoubtedly been the biggest of my life) but even when I lost fish, I wasn't as upset as I would normally be.
It was a week filled with many trips which I will remember for a long time. These are the kind of trips that keep you coming back to the Big Ditch.
