Andrew Burke

I stepped outside around 8am and was greeted by a pleasantly cool morning. Instead of fishing, I felt like taking a beach day to enjoy the nice weather.

I quickly loaded up my car in an effort to beat the crowds that fill the backside beaches of the lower cape during peak summer months.

However, I had a feeling I should pack my go-to surf setup, a 9’ St. Croix Mojo Surf rod equipped with a Van Staal VS200X reel.

Typically if I’m just keeping a rod in my car for a sudden daytime blitz, it’ll be a lightweight 7 footer for convenience sake. However I had just purchased my new Van Staal from Goose Hummock a week earlier, and since have been fishing it every chance I get!

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Pricey yes, but certainly worth it. The reel can be caked in sand, then rinsed off in the surf with saltwater, and still operate like the day it came out of the box. It also makes wetsuiting much more convenient.

I loaded my rod into the car, stuffed my surf bag full of my favorite daytime plugs, and was off to the beach.

After making my way down past the majority of beach goers, I stopped to take in the weather conditions. There was a strong breeze, choppy water, but little to no wave action. The swell was almost non-existent.

Immediately I jumped in the water and found it was relatively mild. Certainly not what I was expecting from an oceanside beach on the lower cape. Swimming around with nothing more than a bathing suit was very comfortable. There was a little bit of mung around, but I could have fished hassle free if I chose to.

From my experience as an oceanside lifeguard, I have seen mackerel wash up on the beach in these conditions, but never had a rod with me to catch what may be pushing them into the shorebreak. But that was all about to change…

About 1 hour past the high tide mark, I saw what looked like an explosion on the surface of the ocean. I immediately sat up and studied the water. BOOM! Again, another momentary topwater feed.

I looked down the beach and for about a quarter mile could see these little explosions occurring every few seconds. To my amazement, they were occurring closer and closer to shore with every passing minute!

As I stood up to make a run for the car to get my rod, I saw beach goers down the beach hurling large baitfish into the surf. Something was pushing the baitfish right up into the shorebreak and onto the sand! I couldn’t identify the baitfish as they sailed through the air from the hands of the beach folk, but I distinctly saw they were white-ish in color.

At this point I sprinted back to my car, opened the trunk, removed the Tsunami Sandeel that was tied on, and snapped on the reliable white Sebile Magic Swimmer. I quickly ran back to my spot at the edge of the crowd and began casting away.

I was not seeing anymore topwater blitzes, but still I cast my magic swimmer as far as I could. Within one half turn of the retrieve, something blew up on the plug. My line went tight and I fought the fish for a few seconds before it popped off. I was disappointed, until another fish immediately picked up the plug and took off! Yet again the hook popped after a brief battle!

I brought my plug in, and sent another cast out as far as I could. Shapes instantly appeared behind my plug in the clear water. This time they couldn’t seem to make contact with the plug! Swipe after swipe, the fish continued to miss the plug right to my feet. Regardless, the hits were spectacular to watch.

On my third cast, I finally got a secure hookset into a fish…

My rod doubled over, and I knew I finally had a solid connection to this fish. It took a short, drag-peeling run and breached. It was about 200 feet away at this point, but it was easy to tell it was a large bluefish. What a great way to help break in a new reel!

After a few minutes I was able to get this fish almost onto the sand, and it was then I realized I had gathered the attention of many people on the beach!

The crowd even broke out into applause at one point! LOL. Thankfully one of them decided to take all of these pictures! Many thanks to that kind person!

The fish were clearly in an all-out feeding mode, but I didn’t take any more casts after landing this fish. Instead, I left the beach with my catch and weighed it in at Blackbeard’s Bait and Tackle in Eastham.

The sun was high in the sky and the beach was pretty hot. The final weight of this fish was 16.6 pounds, certainly a new bluefish personal best for myself!

We brought the fish home for dinner, and in the process discovered the stomach contents.

This fish was absolutely STUFFED with mackerel, which I’m assuming were the large bait fish that were beaching themselves to escape the jaws of the blues. It amazed me that despite how full this bluefish was, it still attacked my 6+ inch plug! This mack might have helped push the fish past the 16 pound mark LOL.

Under the right conditions, the great backside beach can really come alive. I look forward to hitting the ocean beaches of the lower cape again very soon, but under the cover of darkness. I think a situation like this could happen again in the dark of night, but with large stripers pursuing the mackerel instead of blues.

I was fortunate enough to encounter these blitzing bluefish that I think would have attacked any plug I sent their way. But in this case, a larger blue fell for a white Sebile Magic Swimmer. Both white and chrome has been a very effective daytime colors for me this season.

Pursuing stripers along the backside will be more of a nighttime endeavor for myself, but I’ve still caught them in broad daylight along the same stretch of beach as this blitz. Large daytime blues can also be taken with some patience, and experimenting with a variety of conditions. Concentrating on beach structure (troughs, holes, bars) is far more important than exact locations. Visiting a potential spot during the daylight mid-tide will help reveal beach structure.

A 25" July bass taken on a brown and chrome SP Minnow last week
at Nauset Beach.

Catching along the backside beach is rewarding enough as is, but doing so during the “summer doldrums” is a very gratifying experience as a surfcaster.

There are plenty of fish to be had from the beach, and if I’m catching, you certainly can too!

Tight Lines!