I was standing on a bar 200 yards from dry land, in water that barely covered my boots, and there were striped bass swimming right in front of my feet.
Whitewater in every direction. Peanut bunker in the wash. The backs and tails of stripers cutting through the foam close enough to touch.
And an hour earlier, I was pretty sure I'd made a mistake even showing up.
Nothing. Then Everything.
Yesterday morning I hit a beach in this area of the Cape in conditions that would send most people right back to bed. But most people aren’t addicted to fishing like us MFCC’ers. The wind was howling out of the northeast, 25 to 30 miles per hour, maybe more. Big waves were rolling in. It was rough.
When I got on the beach around 9:30, there was nothing. No birds. No bait. Nothing. So I did what I’ve been doing all fall: I started walking and kept my eyes on the sky. About 20 minutes in, way off in the distance, I saw it. A flock of birds going crazy.
Now, I’ve heard from some of you that you’ve been running into plenty of birds lately with nothing but bait underneath them. No bass. I get it, and it happens. But where I’ve been finding birds, there have been stripers under them almost every time.
So I started power walking. When you see birds like that, you never know how long the window is going to stay open.
The first sign of life after 20 minutes of walking. Birds this fired up usually mean bass underneath.
The Wade Out
Here’s the catch: the fish weren’t on the beach. They were feeding on a bar a good way offshore.
To reach them, I had to wade roughly 200 yards through knee-deep water. And once I got out there, it hit me fast: this is not a place to fall down. Between the waves, the current, and the deeper water right off the edge of that bar, losing your balance in these conditions is serious business.
But then I looked around, and I was right in the middle of it.
Bass in one foot of water at my feet. Bass busting at the far end of my cast. Stripers chasing peanut bunker through the suds all around me.
Looking straight down on the feed. Bass were pushing peanut bunker right through this whitewater.
Look closely at the splashes. That’s stripers busting bait just beneath the gulls.
It was a beautiful thing.
Nor’easter conditions. Rough, but the fish loved it.
Why the Popper Didn’t Cut It
I love throwing big topwater plugs when we get these northeast blows. It’s usually my first move.
It took about two casts to realize today was different.
The wind was so strong my line was getting blown all over creation. The popper was getting swallowed up in the whitewater, so the fish could barely track it. And the seagulls were going absolutely nuts for it.
I did catch a few fish on the popper. But the last thing I wanted was to get tangled up with a seagull in 30 mph wind while standing on a bar in the surf.
The gulls were just as interested in my popper as the bass were.
So I asked myself a simple question: if everything on top is chaos, why not get underneath it?
The Switch That Changed Everything
I tied on a 1.5 oz Monomoy Tackle paddle tail, starting with the Blue Mojito color and later switching to olive green. For the next 30 minutes, I caught a fish on almost every single cast.
What mattered was getting the lure down beneath the waves and giving the fish something that looked like a peanut bunker.
Want to know what happened next?
Get the exact retrieve that hooked a striper almost every cast, the tide window, my gear, and where I'm heading next. MFCC members get the full report, plus the general area I encountered this epic blitz.
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About the author
Very fun, Ryan! I got into a school monday night in that same general area as you fished. No birds obviously at night, but had a tip to go try the outgoing tide in the final 3 hrs. I got going late, like 11 or 1115pm and fished til almost 1am, when something went wrong on a fish and my rod snapped. Really bummed. But i was glad 2 land a couple fish, i lost even more, and got bumped or bit by another few. Nowhere near every cast, but after quite a few fishless outings, it was great to finally get some tugs.
Any thoughts of using a Peanut Epoxy Jig in this scenario?
Ryan,
I love your reports and stories. I appreciate this one in particular as it discusses your mindset and tactics. Not just what you did, but why you did it. What was your thought process.
Other than “Go here. Catch fish.” reports which gets everyone all up in arms about “spot burning,” this is the next best thing. Sometimes the fear of spot burning leads to a “here is a picture of the fish I caught somewhere in the ocean” reports. Which are next to useless. And another picture of a 30 inch bass, while nice to look at, provides limited value to the MFCC audience.
This report was educatonal. Thanks!!
Mike
P.S. To be fair, shore fisherman do need to be more secrative than boat fisherman. And I spend a lot of time offshore. So saying “caught fish in the Dump (remember when we could say that :cry:) still leaves 100 sq miles of water to explore by a far more limited set of fishermen…So I get the conudrum. This report hit the sweat spot!!!
I appreciate that comment @Parapapam. I very much understand the concern over spot burning and I understand both sides of the coin. We want to help one another, without sending droves of anglers to a specific area which can ruin the experience. Appreciate you – thanks!
And @jeffreyrichard I think a larger profile peanut jig, perhaps a 2 or 3 ounce version could have worked very well. It also would have cast nicely into that breeze.