Ebb Tide Produces at Monomoy: A Live Report From MFCC Member Bruno Demir

Monomoy Delivers a Five-Species Day

Late July is proving to be one of the most productive stretches of the season around Chatham and Monomoy, and MFCC member Bruno Demir gave listeners a live, on-the-water look at just how good it's gotten during today's live report presented by Cape & Islands Mitsubishi and The Olde Cape Carwash.

Bruno worked a full circuit this morning and afternoon — hitting the rips at Monomoy, running offshore toward Chatham in search of haddock, and circling back to test new fluke spots — and came home with a genuine multi-species haul before a building southwest wind began to chase most boaters back to port.

Stripers on the Ebb Around Monomoy

Bruno's day started where it so often does this time of year — at the rips off Monomoy, which sit in the lee of Nantucket and stay fishable even when wind and sea conditions shut down other stretches of the Cape and Islands. The morning bite came alive right around max ebb tide, when the outgoing current was ripping hard and bait was getting pushed through the guts. Bruno described the scene around 6:30 AM this morning as alive with activity, with birds working over bait and stripers busting on top.

Working the falling water, Bruno and his crew picked up six striped bass, all keeper-sized slots, releasing everything but one fish for the dinner table. The fish were feeding aggressively and weren't picky — they hit both soft plastics on jig heads and Monomoy Tackle trolled swim baits with equal enthusiasm. His technique on the soft plastics was simple but effective: cast the jig head into the smooth-to-rough transition right along the rip line, let it sink and bounce bottom, then work it back with a jigging retrieve. He also pointed out that the two methods can be combined — running a trolling lure through the rip while simultaneously casting and retrieving a soft plastic jig head off to the side.

Bruno's tip for anyone looking to replicate the bite: target the max ebb window specifically, rather than the tide change or dead-low slack. Using a tidal current app to time his arrival, he was on the rips about ninety minutes ahead of max ebb and found the bite red-hot through the peak of the outgoing flow. By early afternoon, working back through the same water on the building flood tide, the stripers had gone quiet — a reminder that even in prime tidal flows, the specific stage of the tide matters as much as the location itself.

Notably, striped bass aren't the only thing prowling those rips right now. Bruno noted that smaller fluke regularly co-mingle with stripers in the same current lines, ambushing the same bait, and he's caught plenty of fluke incidentally while working the rips for bass. In today's report, Bruno detailed fluke following his striper swim baits right next to his boat.

Haddock & Pollock

With a gale-force wind in the forecast, Bruno made an early push offshore east of Chatham to try to beat the weather and get into haddock before conditions turned. He'd found a pile of haddock in that area recently, and with the season progressing, haddock have been moving in closer to shore — putting them within range of a day boat working bottom structure east of the Chatham.

The haddock themselves didn't cooperate on this trip; the fish weren't holding in the spots Bruno expected, and rising wind cut the search short before he could work through his full list of bottom marks. But the pollock more than made up for it. Bruno described being just as happy with a cooler of pollock as his crew boated a solid catch of the bottom species before the building sea forced them back towards land. 

Recreational Bluefin Tuna

That same general area — stretching out toward Crab Ledge and The Regal Sword — has also been the subject of some recreational bluefin tuna chatter this summer. While there are plenty of giant-class bluefin around, recreational-sized fish have been harder to pin down than in recent years.

The fish that do show up in the Crab Ledge/Sword corridor tend to pass through very early in the morning and clear out fast, without holding for more than a few hours. Bruno noted the same scarcity of recreational bluefin south of the Vineyard, an area that produced consistently last season but has gone quiet in 2026. His advice for anyone chasing tuna in either area right now: treat it as a bonus, not a sure thing, and lean on the reliable bottom fishing for haddock and pollock as the backbone of an offshore trip east of Chatham.

A New Fluke Honey Hole

On the run back in from the haddock grounds, Bruno made a point of checking some fluke water he hadn't fished before — a habit he keeps up throughout the season, always probing new bottom in search of fresh fluke ground. The scouting paid off: he located a new spot closer to shore holding 20-inch fluke, mixed in with a solid showing of black sea bass. Between the sea bass, the fluke, the pollock, the striped bass, and the mackerel already in the box, it added up to a five-species day — all within a few hours and a few miles of Monomoy and Chatham.

Fluke Versus Cancer Update

Before signing off to continue fishing, Bruno gave an update on the MFCC community's Fluke Versus Cancer fundraiser benefiting Boston Children's Hospital's pediatric cancer research. With the donation period closing at 5:00 PM today, the effort had climbed to roughly $4,700 against a $5,000 goal — an outstanding result driven entirely by MFCC member support.

Bruno and his cousin Eddie Kooyomjian of Monomoy Tackle plan to select a couple of donors to join them on a fishing trip this coming weekend as a thank-you, with winners to be announced soon. A heartfelt thank-you to everyone in the MFCC community who contributed to help push the fundraiser so close to reaching it's goal! If you haven't yet donated, there is still a brief time left to do so right HERE!

 Tight Lines & Take Care!