Reading Rips, Chasing Pogies, and Betting on Bluefin: An Angler’s Guide to Right Now on Cape Cod

Monomoy Rips: Reading the Water

Monomoy remains one of Bill’s favorite places to fish, and he offered a detailed playbook for working the rips there. His first piece of advice: don’t just fish the named rips that show up on Navionics or your chart plotter. Those spots hold boats, and boat pressure — especially trolling traffic — tends to disorient bait and shut the bite down. Instead, look for the smaller, unnamed outflow rips branching off the major ones. If the named rip is loaded with boats, the satellite rips nearby are likely holding just as many fish with a fraction of the pressure.

Interestingly, Bill noted that side-scan sonar isn’t always the most reliable tool at the rips, since striped bass are often moving fast and holding high in the water column rather than sitting on structure. Birds working parallel to a rip line are the best visual cue — they’re tracking bait pushed up by feeding stripers. He does still use electronics to mark the big schools of sand eels stacked along the bottom, which tell him bait is in the area even when the bass aren’t showing on the screen yet.

On tide versus time of day, Bill was clear: at Monomoy, tide rules all. A big tide swing moving hard at 10 a.m. will out-fish a slack dawn tide almost every time. On smaller tide days — around the half moon, when the swing might only be four feet — dawn still fishes well, but on big-swing days, anglers should prioritize being on the water whenever the current is moving fastest, regardless of the hour. He also pointed to the mix of cold, clear, nutrient-rich Atlantic water meeting warmer Nantucket Sound water as the reason Monomoy fish stay aggressive even in the middle of the day, unlike spots in Cape Cod Bay.

For technique, Bill’s go-to at Monomoy is positioning the boat off to the side of a rip line — far enough to stay out of the strike zone — and casting a squid fly on an intermediate line back into the moving water, watching stripers compete for it on the surface. He gets the same results with smaller soft plastics like an Albie Snax, or topwater plugs such as a Heddon, Zara Spook, or Jumping Minnow. He was quick to note that trolling an X-Rap or a live mackerel will likely out-produce the fly in raw numbers, but nothing beats watching wolf packs of stripers charge a surface offering in skinny, moving water.

Cape Cod Bay: The Pogie Party Returns

Cape Cod Bay has been the story of the summer. Bill described an early-June squid bite — wild topwater fishing on big stripers — that broke out inside Plymouth Harbor, off the flats, and around Sesuit, and that he expected to fade quickly. Instead, it has continued for weeks, with roving schools of large bass following bait around the bay. Birds are the key indicator; the action tends to concentrate on the eastern and southern sides of the bay, but Bill emphasized it moves daily and may take some running around to relocate.

Pogies (menhaden) have also arrived in force, with Bill spotting his first school in Plymouth around July 4th. Within days, reports had giant bluefin tuna — fish estimated at 90 inches or larger — crashing pogie schools in the bay, with some large bass mixed in underneath as well. Smaller, less-productive pogie schools were also holding along Warren’s Cove and down through South Plymouth toward the 120-foot line. Bill’s advice for anyone chasing this bite: keep snag hooks and circle hooks rigged and ready, since these pogie schools look like they’re here to stay for a while.

Bill was careful to point out why this year’s pattern feels different from the well-known “pogie party” of a few seasons back: this year’s squid bite is far less accessible because the fish are moving too quickly for the average angler to consistently get on them. He also tied the strength of this bite directly to the current state of the striper biomass — with far fewer fish in the population than a decade ago (most fish in the 28-to-45-inch range), concentrations of bait now dictate almost everything about where and when stripers show up in numbers.

Earlier in the season, Plymouth’s deeper water also produced strong vertical jigging on sand eels, similar to patterns typically seen off Provincetown, along with good early-morning casting on sand eel bites.

The Backside and Race Point

Bill flagged Race Point and the backside of the Cape — running down along the lobster pot line from the point — as a spot that fishes well nearly every year, and this season has been especially strong. Part of the reason: many charter captains have been pulled into the bay chasing the squid bite instead of running around the backside, leaving the potline with less pressure. Success there depends heavily on the chart plotter — cruising the potline to locate large concentrations of fish, which Bill says are unmistakable once spotted. He expects the backside to keep producing into August, with sand eel and pogie bites developing as the season progresses.

Bluefin Tuna: Rumblings East of Chatham

The 2026 bluefin bite is shaping up differently than recent years, according to Bill. For the past four or five seasons, the reliable rec fish action has been well south — off Block Island and south of the Vineyard — while the grounds east of Chatham and around Stellwagen/Peaked Hill on the backside have been comparatively quiet. That may be changing. Bill has heard the same early rumblings the hosts have picked up from MFCC member Bruno Demir: recreational fish showing up east of Chatham between Crab Ledge and the Sword.

Bill’s theory is that instead of pushing up through the traditional northeast canyons toward the southside grounds, some fish may be skirting around Georges Bank and filtering in from deep-water seamounts farther east. He cautioned that fishing Crab Ledge and the Sword is a size gamble — anglers might hook a 45-inch schoolie or a 105-inch giant on the same jig strike. Still, he’s hopeful for a repeat of the standout 2022 backside season, when 55-inch bluefin blitzed on top along the Cape’s eastern edge, and thinks conditions may be setting up for a similar push of fish into that area in the coming weeks.

Fluke vs. Cancer 2026

Before signing off, Kevin and Eddy reintroduced the Fluke vs. Cancer fundraiser for 2026, a cause close to Eddy and Bruno Demir’s hearts that has raised more than $35,000 for Boston Children’s Hospital’s pediatric cancer care and treatment unit. A donation of $30 or more enters you for a spot aboard one of two boats — Bruno’s or Eddy’s — for a day of fluke fishing, with anglers keeping their catch.

Donations opened Wednesday, July 15th and run through Tuesday, July 21st, with the trip itself planned for the last weekend of July, scheduling and weather permitting. This year’s trip is being moved up earlier in the summer specifically so more anglers on vacation or with time off before school starts have a better shot at making it if their name is drawn. For full Fluke vs Cancer details and information on how to contribute to the fundraiser, please CLICK HERE!

Tight Lines & Take Care!