Nick Pidgeon

Every late August, my family and I take a four night vacation on Cape Cod during late summer.

Instead of spending these evenings relaxing, my father and I hit the beach in search of stripers.

For years we would fish Hardings’ beach in Chatham, and catch stripers in the 20-24 inch range.

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I started fishing Harding's Beach when I was just 9 years old. My dad would hook the bass then hand me the pole - a classic father-son fishing scenario.

Yet in recent years my father and I gave up on the spot, blaming the poor fishing on the seals.

My father and I have been experimenting with new locations over the past three years. These new locations gave up some bluefish, but not the large stripers that I longed to catch.

I spent a lot of time researching in preparation for this year’s vacation, with hopes of catching a large striped bass.

After about two months of research, and making quite a few homemade plugs, I came to the conclusion that I should focus my limited amount time on fishing the canal.

I decided to get in touch with Ryan, and he informed me that fishing the beaches near the canal could also be productive.

I heeded his advice, so my father and I made a plan to walk and fish some of the beaches nearby the canal. However as soon as we started fishing, we discovered that the beach was blown out with seaweed due to a stiff onshore wind.

The weed was so thick that it made fishing impossible!

We decided to walk to the Sandwich marina on the canal, in an attempt to find fishable water. The waters inside the marina were clean, and luckily this move saved the night! 

I was fortunate enough to watch a schoolie come up and inhale my eel underneath a lighted dock. Not a bad start to the vacation!

On the second night, my father and I decided to ditch the eels, and focus our energy on the canal. We opted to jig the Scusset area to no avail, but saw numerous 20-30 pound class fish caught along the banks.

By chance, we ended up talking to Joey Leggio, a pro-staffer for Al Gags, who instructed us on how to effectively jig the canal.

He also mentioned that most of the fish are being caught off the bottom, so my father and I figured a trip to Canal Bait & Tackle was in order.

I bumped into a friendly guy while at CB&T, who last year helped me pick out a Guppy pencil popper that I used to catch this 20 pounder:

After catching up with him, my father and I bought enough jigs for the remainder of our vacation.

We were back at the Ditch fishing by 3AM.

On my first cast my Al Gags Whip-it Fish came back chomped in half, so I figured there were some bluefish around.

However, for the next two hours we weren’t able jig up any fish.

All of a sudden, around 5:30AM, I picked my jig off the bottom and it was immediately slammed by a fish. Drag was peeling off my reel, so I knew it was a nice one.

My dad was so focused on jigging that he didn’t notice I was hooked up, so I opted to land the fish myself. This was a bit of a challenge due to the slick rocks that line the canal, and should be done with caution.

When I finally brought the fish out of the water, it was like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

I felt as though I had just shot a big buck!

My dad was impressed, but he immediately started fishing again. I did the same, and eventually hooked up with a bluefish.

My dad opted to fish the final night of our stay, but I chose to catch up on some sleep. I had not slept much at all during the past few days of chasing fish.

Unfortunately, my dad didn’t catch anything that night, but that is just how it goes sometimes at the legendary Cape Cod Canal.

Tight lines! 

Nick​