Doormats on Outer Shoals & Bonito Blitz at Monomoy
Cape Cod fishing hit a rare stretch this past weekend where two completely different styles of fishing both turned on. Monomoy Tackle founder and owner Eddy Kooyomjian had a front row seat for all the action and was kind enough to provide us with a fresh in-depth report!
Eddy taped this weekend's podcast report fresh off a Friday fluke trip on the outer shoals and a Saturday morning bonito run that produced the most solid funny fish intel the podcast has gotten all season. Between the two days, Eddy fished calm, glassy conditions on Friday and a fast-moving, bird-driven blitz on Saturday, coming home with a full rundown of where the fish are holding and exactly what is putting them in the boat.
Fluke Report: The Outer Shoals
Friday's fluke trip doubled as the giveaway outing for the 2026 Fluke versus Cancer fundraiser, and Eddy treated it like any serious fluke mission with prep starting the night before. Rather than buy bait, Eddy went down to a small pier close to home in Chatham just before midnight and jigged up a batch of squid himself, noting that nothing beats bait that fresh when doormats are the target.
The trip launched at 6 a.m. out of Saquatucket with guest angler Adam Gamble aboard, while Eddy's cousin Bruno Demir ran a second boat with fellow winner Jane Simpson. Both boats made the run out to Monomoy first, a stop Eddy treats as a standard part of the routine to check on striper activity before continuing offshore. The birds behaving unusually Friday morning — moving fast and diving in tight little groups — was Eddy's first clue that bonito had already shown up in the area, though the crew didn't connect with one on that pass.
From Monomoy, the boats pushed out roughly six to seven miles to the east to the outer shoals, where Bruno had already set up on a drift by the time Eddy arrived. Conditions were about as good as fluke fishing gets — flat, bright, and calm — which Ed admitted actually makes him a little nervous, since picture-perfect bluebird days can sometimes shut fish down. That worry didn't last long. Adam hooked up almost immediately on a popcorn rig rigged with a pink-and-white skirt, the same setup that had worked for on the trip the year before, and the bite stayed steady through the tide change and into the turn.
The key through the day was working the full range of depths available on the drift, anywhere from 20 to 50 feet, to locate the pockets holding the bigger fish, since larger fluke tended to show up in small, scattered groups rather than spread evenly across the bottom. Once the crew dialed that in, the quality picked up fast. Adam limited out on his own and could have doubled his limit fishing solo, mixing in a 19-incher and a 22-inch fish along the way. Not to be outdone, Eddy's brother Mark added a 23-incher, which Ed got a kick out of given how competitive his brother can be. Several of the fluke were coughing up squid and sand eels boat side, a clear sign the fish had their feedbags on.
Productive Fluke Baits
As for what was actually working, Eddy and his brother eventually switched over to a five-inch spoon once the drift settled into the 1.8- to 2.5-mile-per-hour range, and that larger profile matched up well with the whole squid some of the fish had been keying on. The popcorn rigs continued to produce all day for the smaller forage bite, imitating the sand eels the fluke were also feeding on, and Scudetto Jigs picked up a good number of fish as well. Ed credited part of Adam's success to the tempo and cadence he found working his jig along the bottom — a small mechanical detail that made a real difference over the course of the day.
Beyond the fish count, Eddy pointed to the whole rhythm of a good fluke day as part of the draw: engine off, drifting quietly, vinyl playing in the background, stories and jokes passing the time between bites. Adam, by his own admission not much of a fluke angler going in, told Eddy afterward that he didn't realize how technical and genuinely interesting the fishery could be. The day wrapped back at Ed's cottage, where the group cleaned the catch together and sent Adam home with a pile of fresh fillets — and a standing invite to buddy-boat anytime he wants to get back out on the fluke grounds.
Bonito Report: Monomoy
If Friday was calm and technical, Saturday was fast and furious. After the fluke trip, Eddy's son Jack — self-described funny fish fanatic — was already lobbying for another trip out Saturday morning. They headed back to the same general area off Monomoy where the birds had been acting strangely the day before, only this time the word was clearly out: the spot was packed with boats, effectively a parking lot on the water, all drawn in by the same fast-moving bird activity Eddy had noticed on Friday.
With trolling off the table given the crowd, Ed and family worked the drift with the engine off, positioning where they thought the birds might surface next. It paid off quickly — a feed popped up right off the stern. Eddy connected on a pink electric-chicken-colored talon, and once the fish came boat side it regurgitated its most recent meal, revealing something notable: rather than the tiny micro-baits typical of early-season funny fish, these bonito had been keyed in on three-to-five-inch herring and sand eels, explaining why they weren't shy about eating a full four-inch plug.
Productive Bonito Presentations
After that fish, Eddie switched to a blue-green color he calls “Bruno,” named for his cousin, to better match the larger herring bait he'd just seen, and it produced a couple more hookups and a second fish boated. Jack, wanting to work a bait himself, switched to a slimmer profile resin jig and hooked up on his own cast, though that fish didn't make it to the boat.
For anglers hoping to get in on the bite, Ed broke down the lineup from Monomoy Tackle. Early in the season, when bait tends to run small as young-of-year baitfish get flushed from the inlets, the smallest metals in the shop's heavy bait jig line — one-ounce and one-and-a-third-ounce straight metals — tend to be the go-to. Monomoy Tackle's signature resin-coated peanut-shape jigs have long been a staple for the same reason.
However, this season with bait running larger this weekend, the talon — a sinking jerk bait with a weight-transfer system that lets it be burned at high speed without popping to the surface — was the standout, and Eddie noted that high-speed trolling for bonito is an underrated tactic when there's enough open water to do it safely and courteously.
A slim-profile, single-hook resin jig built to mimic sand eels and a six-inch soft plastic that can be fished weedless rounds out the lineup. Ed's broader takeaway: funny fish can be maddeningly picky some days, which is exactly why having a range of profiles, sizes, and colors on hand matters as much as being in the right spot.
Fluke vs Cancer Thank You
As Eddy noted, Friday's trip wasn't just about the fishing — it was the prize outing for the 2026 Fluke versus Cancer fundraiser, which set out to raise $5,000 and ended up bringing in more than $5,400 for Boston Children's Hospital's pediatric cancer research unit. Eddy and Bruno handled the drawing themselves, working through a list that included repeat donors, past participants who came back again, and plenty of new faces.
Winners Adam Gamble and Jane Simpson each fished aboard the two boats, and both trips delivered exactly the kind of day the fundraiser is built around — great fishing, new friendships, and a cause worth showing up for. A big thank-you goes out to everyone in the My Fishing Cape Cod community who donated!
Tight Lines & Take Care!🎣