First Full Week of Summer on Cape Cod
MFCC member Bruno Demir of Cape and Islands Mitsubishi and the Olde Cape Car Wash gives us a full report detailing recent trips to the Nantucket Shoals, Monomoy Rips, and offshore to the canyons. Fresh off a Father’s Day trip to a World Cup match in San Francisco — Bruno still managed to fit in a fluke trip south of Nantucket, an offshore run to the canyons, and a lights-out Monday evening at Monomoy, all inside the same stretch of late June.
If you’re trying to figure out where to point the bow this week or weekend, his early summer report will help you determine how to plan your next successful outing.
Fluke: Big Fish, Fading Window
Bruno has made three trips this year to the fluke grounds of Nantucket, and while he’ll tell you it’s not quite the fishery it was in years past, the size has been there. The first trip produced a six-pounder and an eight-pounder — fish in the 24- to 25-inch class. The second trip stepped up to nine and nine-and-a-half pounders pushing 26 to 27 inches. By the third trip last week, the boat landed an 11.5-pounder and a 10-pounder, both north of 28 inches.
For context, Bruno describes a 28-inch fluke as having a mouth that rivals a striped bass’s — “maybe a little bit bigger, with teeth” — which tells you everything about why these fish are such efficient predators on the bottom.
The bait situation around the Nantucket Shoals has been straightforward. Early in the season, dogfish were thick enough that Bruno switched over to Gulp! to fish through them. As the dogfish thinned out and moved, the program shifted back to natural bait — fluke belly, striper belly, and spearing have been the most consistent producers, with squid still being effective. However, despite the plethora of squid this season, it has been out fished by the meat baits according to Bruno.
Bruno's main concern with the fluke fishery this season are out of state commercial draggers that have hammered this same stretch of bottom for a couple of seasons running, and he believes that pressure is what knocked the fluke fishery back from its peak. When the federal government opened additional scallop grounds a couple of years back, some of those draggers shifted effort toward scallops, which seemed to take pressure off the fluke grounds and let the population start to recover.
Bruno's benchmark for whether that recovery is holding: if July and August produce big fish again down around Great Round Shoal, that’s the sign the fishery is bouncing back. However, it's worth trying to check for reports of draggers in and around the shoals before planning a trip to target fluke this summer.
Bottom line: the window is closing but not closed. Bruno figures there’s another week or so left in the season, with Thursday and Friday of this week shaping up as a solid weather window. If you go, bring Monomoy Tackle fluke spoons and high-low rigs, and don’t be afraid to lean on bait strips of fluke belly, striper, or spearing.
Offshore at the Canyons
Right before he left for San Francisco, Bruno got out to the canyons with Team Hook ’Em on Thursday. It’s not a fishery he talks about often on the podcast — partly because it’s a completely different discipline than inshore fishing, and partly because, as he put it, you’re 120 miles offshore in conditions where a mistake can genuinely hurt someone.
The trip itself produced yellowfin tuna, along with a big mahi that got away boat side. Bruno reported strong action at both Atlantis Canyon and Hydrographer Canyon. The bigger story might be the water itself: an unusually warm Gulf Stream eddy has pushed up early this season, with temperature breaks at the canyons running from 74 degrees down to 55 degrees in the span of about a mile.
Bruno suspects El Niño conditions are driving that warm-water push — the same pattern that’s forecast to suppress hurricane activity, which he notes is good news for anyone planning offshore trips into September and October.
Bottom line: if you’ve got the boat and the experience for it, conditions at Atlantis and Hydrographer are producing now, and Thursday/Friday of this week should bring a good number of boats out chasing yellowfin and mahi on that warm-water push.
Monomoy: Gator Blues on Rogers Shoal
After a stretch of snotty weather — rain and 30-to-40-mph winds — kept Monomoy reports spotty, Bruno and his cousin Allen squeezed in a short, sharp trip on Monday this week. They left the dock around 2:30 p.m., were fishing by 3:00, and were back at the dock by 4:30 — roughly ninety minutes on the water for a 30-inch bluefish kept and three slot stripers (29 to 31 inches) caught and released.
Rogers Shoal — the inside stretch of Monomoy — was holding bluefish stacked on sand eels, marked by birds working right on top of the school. Bruno trolled twin Talon 110 swim baits from Monomoy Tackle through the school (one of them, fittingly, named after him by his cousin Eddy Kooyomjian). Bruno connected on landing a 30-inch gator blue. He kept that fish — by his own admission, he’d rather eat bluefish than striper — and left the rest of the school undisturbed once he had what he needed, noting the fish were aggressive and feeding high in the water column.
From there, Bruno and Allen ran to Handkerchief Shoal — actually hoping to find bonito, which he had success with there in the past during late June — and found the rip running exactly as predicted. Despite no bonito showing, the rip produced three slot stripers in the 29- to 31-inch range, all on Monomoy Tackle swim baits, with no clear color preference. Notably, Stonehorse on the horizon was holding roughly 30 boats. However, Bruno and Allen had fish all to themselves at Handkerchief.
The timing method behind it: When planning a run to Monomoy, Bruno doesn’t fish the standard high-tide/low-tide clock. He uses the MultiTide app to identify maximum water flow — the point of peak flood or peak ebb — rather than the tide change itself. On Monday, the flood began around 10:00–10:30 a.m., but maximum flood (moving at roughly a knot and a half) didn’t hit until 2:30 p.m., with slack following at 5:30. That gave him a target window of roughly 1:30 to 4:00 p.m. to fish the rips at peak strength, when bait gets disoriented in the fast-moving water and stripers and blues feed opportunistically.
Depth matters too. Bruno's rule of thumb: if the shallowest part of a rip is more than 20 to 30 feet deep, he skips it because it’s tough to reach feeding fish on the bottom when the current is moving that fast. His sweet spot is a rip with a shallowest point in the 9- to 12-foot range, with anything under 15 feet generally worth a look.
Bottom line: you don’t need to fish where the fleet is. Bruno's approach — timing the max water flow rather than the tide change, and targeting shallower rips in the 9- to 15-foot range — consistently puts him on fish away from crowded spots like Stonehorse.
What to Bring This Week
- South of Nantucket (fluke): fluke belly and striper belly, spearing strips, Monomoy Tackle fluke spoons, high-low rigs; keep Gulp! in the bag in case dogfish reappear.
- Canyons (yellowfin/mahi): standard offshore trolling spread; watch for the sharp temperature breaks (74° to 55° within a mile) as fish-holding on the edges at Atlantis and Hydrographer.
- Monomoy/Rogers Shoal (bluefish): Monomoy Tackle Talon 110's
- Handkerchief Shoal (slot stripers): Troll Monomoy Tackle swim baits, color doesn’t appear to matter; fish the rip during max flood/ebb flow, not the tide change. You also have a chance at a bonito!
This time of year, the Cape’s fishery is firing on every level — bottom fish winding down to the south, blues and stripers stacking up in the Monomoy rips, and the offshore game heating up thanks to a warm-water push that has everyone watching the canyon temperature breaks. Bruno's outlook for the back half of the week: a solid weather window Thursday and Friday should open up all three fisheries at once, so the only real decision is which one to target!
Tight Lines & Take Care! 🎣