How To Catch Black Sea Bass In Nantucket Sound

Sea Bass fishing on Nantucket Sound can be a great way to introduce family members and friends to the exciting world of angling.

When using the correct light tackle gear, these fish put up a great fight and are, in my opinion, one of the best tasting fish in the Atlantic.

In this article I will tell you all about Black Sea Bass as a species, plus some of the many lessons I've learned while targeting these fish. Specifically, we'll talk tips and tactics, as well as the best gear for bottom fishing the plentiful black sea bass grounds of Nantucket Sound.

The black sea bass is actually a member of the grouper family, and just like grouper, black sea bass contain a couple of very sweet tasting, white meat fillets. 

They are known as “protogynous hermaphrodites” which means they start as females and end up as mature males. The males will develop a big hump on the top of their heads and can take on a gorgeous light blue to purple coloration.

During the colder months, the Northeast biomass of sea bass will push out to deeper waters east of Cape Cod, typically staying in depths from around 250–550 feet. When the water temperatures rise, they move into shallower inshore water depths from 10-120 feet. 

Plus Nantucket Sound is home to some of their favorites meals including:

All of this helps to make Nantucket Sound a great place for the novice angler to enjoy a terrific day of black sea bass fishing.

One of the many reasons why Nantucket Sound is my favorite place to target sea bass is because of the shallow waters. This makes it easy to use lighter weight jigs and utilize the lightest gear possible which makes for the best fight, and gives the fish a chance to take line, and really put a good bend in the rod. 

I wasn’t introduced to sea bass fishing until a few years back when I was invited on a trip to Nantucket Sound by Goose Hummock Shop’s manager, Danny Jones and our close friend, Capt. Rich Haight.

We left out of Bass River at 6am and were back at the house enjoying cold beverages and filleting our limit of this tasty fish by early afternoon. I quickly fell in love with this fishery!

Both reels were spooled with 30 pound Power Pro braid and 20-30 pound fluorocarbon leaders.

I also brought along a box of jigs including:

For many years the most popular way to fool sea bass was with bait. The most commonly used baits are:

Even now, probably the most talked about and used technique to catch sea bass while in the 15-35ft depth range is to put a strip of squid on a 1oz - 2.5oz buck tail jig and drop it to the bottom, bouncing it around any structure.

This was the technique I started with, but I soon found that holding bottom with the wind and tide conditions was difficult, plus I was catching a lot of undersize sea bass (under 15 inches,) scup and sea robins.

I then dug in to my box and tied on a 4oz Shimano Butterfly-Flat Fall jig and quickly noticed a huge difference in the quality of fish I was catching.

Pretty soon both Danny and Capt. Rich tied on 3.5-5oz Butterfly jigs from Shimano and within a little over an hour we had a cooler full of mostly 20+ inch sea bass, and were soon headed back to the dock with full coolers.