I left the house at one o’clock in the afternoon this past Sunday, which if you know anything about surfcasting on Cape Cod, is a strange time to start a trip. Most of us are creatures of dawn, dusk and night. But I wasn’t chasing a normal window. I was chasing a hunch.
The night before, I’d been scrolling through the My Fishing Cape Cod forum when a post caught my eye —MFCC member Ian Marcus had put together a really nice day of boat fishing off the backside beaches. Then I checked the forecast: southeast wind, rain, fog. Ugly by most standards. But I’ve learned that “ugly” and “empty beach with feeding fish” often travel together out here. I took the member’s location, cross-referenced it with my past experience fishing this area of the Cape, and made a call to fish this beach.
By the time I pulled into the lot, it was raining hard enough that the drive down felt like it took twice as long as it should have. There was a small lake where the parking lot used to be. Just me, the fog rolling low over the water, and a southeast wind that was, thankfully, lighter than advertised. The tide was dropping, which I like for this spot.
The overlook from the parking lot, with a mist hanging over the water.
The empty stretch of beach and surf, fog rolling in low over the water.
I didn’t see bait. I didn’t see diving birds working a school. What I saw, early into the walk, was a striped bass carcass — a fish that looked to be around slot size, long dead, laying in the sand. Outer Cape beaches run thirty miles from Chatham to Provincetown, and any evidence of life in that vast a stretch is worth paying attention to. A dead fish could mean there were live ones nearby recently. I kept walking.
The dead striper I found early in the walk, first sign of life on an otherwise quiet beach.
Walk, Cast, Repeat
My approach was straight out of the playbook Ian McPartland from Goose Hummock laid out at one of our winter Zoominars this past off-season: walk, cast, walk, cast. Cover water. Don’t marry a spot. I’d go fifty to a hundred yards, throw one cast, and keep moving. The lure was a 1¼-ounce white Guppy pencil popper, walked across the surface at a medium clip. Flat calm and sunny, I’d leave this plug in the bag. Foggy, rainy, a little chop on the water — this is exactly when I want it tied on.
The white Guppy pencil popper, the lure that would do the work
Walking and casting down the empty beach
The Strike
About an hour in, it happened. A explosion of whitewater came up under the plug — the kind of strike that yanks you straight out of whatever daydream you’d drifted into and plants you back in your body, heart hammering. I missed him. But I’d just gotten the only information that mattered: there were fish in front of me, somewhere along that empty stretch of sand, on a day when the entire outer Cape felt abandoned.
I fired the pencil popper right back into the same water. Almost the instant it landed, a good bass came three-quarters out of the wave and missed it. I kept walking it. Another fish swiped and missed. Then, on the third or fourth take, one connected — and I knew immediately by the pull that this wasn’t a schoolie.
Boy it felt great to connect with a fish!
It’s been a slow year out on the outer Cape beaches for a lot of our members. It’s been a while since I personally connected with a fish out there. So standing in that wash, feeling this bass dig against the rod, I let myself have the thought: maybe this is the start of something. Maybe the fall run is about to turn on.
Landing a fish in the outer Cape surf isn’t always simple — you’ve got swell rolling in, and if you’re not paying attention, it’ll put you on your back, waders and all. I worked him carefully into the wash and got him up onto the sand. Bit over the slot, though I didn’t measure — I’ll let the photos make the case.
Here’s a detail I want every surfcaster reading this to take note of: I fished that plug with the belly treble intact but the tail treble modified — hook points snipped clean off, just enough left to keep the plug’s swing and balance honest.
This fish had eaten the plug deep. If that tail hook had been fully rigged, I’d have been in for a long, ugly release. Instead, I had him unhooked and swimming off strong in under a minute. He looked healthy. He looked like he had a good rest of the season ahead of him.
Close-up of the modified tail treble, points snipped off, belly hook still fully rigged
Oddities on the Walk Back
I fished another hour after that — no more bites, but I wasn’t exactly complaining. Along the way I found a live horseshoe crab stranded on the sand and flipped him back into the wash, though I’ll admit I’m not fully confident he made it — he didn’t swim off with much conviction, and there’s a decent chance the surf just tossed him right back up after I walked away.
The stranded horseshoe crab, rescued and held up before being returned to the water
I also found something I’d never come across before: the tail section of a blue lobster. I’ve heard blue lobsters are a one-in-a-million find, but when I got back to the lot, someone had left another lobster near the beach path with that same bluish cast to the shell — which makes me wonder if it’s less “genetic lottery” and more “what happens to a lobster’s shell after it’s been dead a while in saltwater.” If anyone in the MFCC community actually knows the answer, I’d love to hear it.
The blue-tinted lobster tail found along the beach
No grand conclusion here, just this: an empty beach, bad weather, a forum tip, and a little faith in a plan built on a hunch. If you’ve been getting skunked out there this year, don’t count the Outer Cape out yet. Hopefully we have a great late September, October and early November in store on these beautiful beaches.
Tight lines! 🎣
Ryan
The sun breaking through at the end of the trip, a faint rainbow over the water