Well we have crossed the mid-way point of the winter, which means we only have around 2.5 months until the first stripers of 2012 will be trickling into Cape Cod's waters. To help get through these tough last couple of months, here's a story from Captain Paul Peluso about a late October 2011 trip.
Hopefully we'll see plenty of bass like the one below in 2012!
If you have a story and photo from an awesome 2011 trip that you'd like to share, feel free to send it along to [email protected].
Take care,
Ryan
Submitted by Captain Paul Peluso
With the pending Big Nor’easter coming I made the 5 AM call to try a sneak a trip in before the heavy rain and wind. Sent a few messages out, had Neil respond and Junior on standby. Junior, who just the other day landed a nice 26 lb striper was surf fishing from the East Jetty all night long with no luck.
I tried to get him to come but he was up all night and either too tired or just didn’t think the fish were there because it was a SLOW night??? Anyway I just wanted him to know that he had the 3rd spot that day
Neil and I (Pablo) tried several spots again in the bay but not a tap. We were 1 of 3 boats when we hit the inlet at 1st light. Headed straight for the exact spot with Kat. Looked Very promising Birds all over Gannets diving oh I got excited seeing Gannets slamming the water. Whats a Gannet you say? It’s a bird the dives from high altitude slams into the water completely submerges it self and catches bait fish. They look like small Kamakazi’s. They usually mean there’s blitzing Stripers around but not today they were sporadically hitting the water and we investigated a few spots but no fish???
The wind started to HOWL and the ocean was getting snotty so I said lets go back into the bays and work the areas we saw all the bait in. Just then jr calls from the jetty go to the spot I’m telling you go to the spot… So I Went to the spot lol.
we had a severe wind against tide situation. It was like we were fishing on anchor with a ripping incoming tide and North wind. This actually was a good thing for it held us in the strike zone till the fish showed up. This took a while for the drifts were SLOW and LONG with out nothing to show for our efforts.
Then just around 9 AM we were just about to give up as the rain just started to come down when my reel started to scream and my line was zipping out. I set the hook HARD, Pablo On!!!
Now Thats what I'm Talking about 28 lbs Bass
The fish fought HARD and we were getting close to shore for we caught her in 8′ of water. Neil slowly moved the boat away from the shore and I was able to fight the fish but the current made this 28 lbs fish feel like 100 lbs and every inch was a battle. Now I see were getting to close to the buoy and I had to have Neil move the boat again.
I told him to go forward slow and I was in danger of losing my fish as she could get easily tangled around the buoy. I decided to hold my thumb on the reel not allowing and line to come off, I knew this would stress the line and knots out but it was my only choice so I did it.
We only had to move a couple of feet so it wasn’t that much stress and I was then able to get the fish to the net and Neil did a FANTASTIC job helping me land this fish. If I was alone I probably would have lost her. Check out the pics
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