by My Fishing Cape Cod member Tim Donnelly

"I envy not him that eats better meat than I do, nor him that is richer, or that wears better clothes than I do. I envy nobody but him, and him only, that catches more fish than I do. And such a man is like to prove an Angler, and this noble emulation I wish to you and all young Anglers."

- Izaac Walton, The Compleat Angler

I love to see pictures of really good fish, particularly when they are handled with the care and respect they have earned, while thriving for years against the odds of nature.

I often feel a slight pang of envy when I see other anglers catching "monsters" in the surf, however those pangs of envy quickly dissipate. Seeing other anglers catching big fish stirs my mind, and inspires me to think about what I can do differently. 

How can I put myself in a position to catch the “fish of a lifetime”?

I ponder the effectiveness of my techniques, what I’m throwing, where I’m fishing, and reconsider the tides. Balancing all these variables is one of the reasons I like to fish in the surf as much as I do.

One of the great things about My Fishing Cape Cod is not the shared pictures of a successful outings, but the gracious sharing of information about how that catch is made. It is the reason why I’ve stayed a member for all these years - it's the opportunity to learn.

In this article you'll find a brief recap of some of the recent activity inside the My Fishing Cape Cod members' forum. Throughout this article I will be highlighting some of the best pictures with links to specific forum threads and sources for more information.

You can continue reading by scrolling below, but you can also use this table of contents to jump to a specific section.

Black Sea Bass

I’ve seen it written that when the black sea bass move in, the tautog tend to move out. Anecdotally, this seems to be the case as of late, with no recent forum posts of black fish, but plenty of black sea bass posts being shared since opening day on May 21st.

The rock piles of Buzzards Bay are producing lots of large male black sea bass for those that can catch windows in the weather. Further east at the Tire Reef off Yarmouth and School Reef off Harwich, people have been reporting catching their limit only after culling through many, many shorts.

Bluefish

There are some big yellow eyed devils roaming around the Cape again this season. Some people have been frustrated, since bluefish are often mixed with target species such as large striped bass. However, when you hook into a large bluefish, you're in for a fight you will not soon forget!

Scup

One of the common by-catches of targeting black sea bass, especially when bait is used, are scup. This time of year it's not uncommon to come across scup almost as big as a dinner plate.

Prepared simply and grilled whole, scup yields a good portion of tender, sweet flesh and is well worth the effort of scaling.

Winter Flounder

Winter flounder was on the agenda at the My Fishing Cape Cod Cod & Coffee event in March at Cape & Islands Mitsubishi. Flounder was also the subject of a recent MFCC blog post.

Patrick Cunningham and his wife showed us how it's done by going out and catching a dinner of winter flounder.

To the north of the Cape, Little Sister Charters has been on the blackbacks up in Boston Harbor, limiting out on most trips with average sizes increasing as the season gets moving.

Striped Bass

The big girls have moved into town and trophy bass are holding in Buzzards Bay and the Sounds. A few members seem to have these big breeders on speed dial, consistently pulling leviathans from boulder fields, open beaches, estuaries and other unnamed honey holes.

One such member is John Keech who's been going "old school" by bouncing a white bucktail tipped with a plastic paddle tail for extra action.