Ryan Collins
At 7:45am this morning I met up with MFCC member Jeff Petter for a day of surfcasting.
Conditions were pretty gnarly to say the least. The wind was howling out of the northeast at more than 20 miles per hour.
The waves were stacked up and I estimated they were averaging about 5 feet. Most of the beach was covered in foam and I wondered if we would even be able to cast beyond the wash.
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I scanned the breakers for fish as we walked down the beach. Sometimes it is actually possible to see bass cruising in the cresting waves, but more often I will see splashes from stripers as they chase bait.
Yet the most reliable way of finding fish during the fall on Cape Cod is to spot the birds. At around 8:15am Jeff and I spotted a flock of a dozen terns and gulls working hard over the breaking waves.
I worked my way down the beach while Jeff (pictured above) began casting. Finally I settled into a weed-free section of shoreline and started fishing. It was not long until I had my first hit, but unfortunately I missed the fish.
Then I caught glimpse of a small school of stripers busting on bait right in the heart of the waves. I tossed my plug as far as I could into the teeth of the wind and said a prayer it would reach the breaking bass.
One or two pops of the rod is all it took, and I was locked into what would turn out to be the best fish of the day...
Hear the water is pretty dirty/weedy.
Definitely Mark. Some beaches are all munged/weeded up, but then just a few miles down the coast the water is clean.