Meeting Vinny Foti at 6 AM came quick. I’ve been running hard this June. I’ve been running hard for ten years. And yea, it’s for fishing most the time but the crack of dawn daily still makes a man tired. That being said it was sure a great feeling when Vinny, Rick and I were motoring out of South Dennis harbor early today to start the hunt for my 30 plus inch striped bass.
We were headed directly to a shoal 4.4 miles out from the harbor. Word was out that there were a heap of nice stripers here yesterday. Well, there must have been because there were a ton of boats. When I circled and counted in all directions there were 36 boats!
The fish were there however. Vinny lit up his fish finder and let out a, “Holly crap! Look at all these fish. And big ones too!”
Rick and I huddled around the screen and there they were. Each of these thick blips on the screen are fish and indeed good size ones by the size of the blips. They were anywhere from 15 feet down to 40 feet down.
I was fishing my 9-weight Winston Jungle rod today with a 350 grain sinking Sonar. Vinny handed me a chartreuse Ass Whacker and like I was fishing for sea bass again, I let her down deep. Mending and feeding and counting to 30 each time I let line out.
For all the fish we saw on the screen, fishing was slow. We saw only about five fish caught on the nearby boats that we could monitor. None of which were the big ones we saw on the screen. Lucky for me I caught two of the 22” stripers.
Lack of sizeable stripers eating and the crowd got Vinny pondering a move. I was hoping Vinny would suggest a move to Billings Gate and sure enough he did. Me and Vinny fished here on Monday and it was fabulous. When we arrived the fish were waiting.
Seems most the Cape Cod Flyrodder Club members were off today. Vinny was chatting on his radio to them and everyone was sharing info. Turns out Billings Gate had the most fish by a long shot and eventually we had several fly fishing boats sharing the area.
It was a blast catching fish. There were certainly enough to go around. It reminded me of a boat party with my friends back fishing around Thermopolis, WY. In an hour I’ll bet Rick and I landed 20 stripers anywhere from 20” to 25”.
All fish get smart eventually and soon these fish left us. Perhaps they go deep and don’t bite or perhaps they move. Either way it was time for us to look at the flats. I’d been dreaming of getting back to the flats since I experienced them Monday. Unfortunately after an hour of searching the flats we had to leave. There were no stripers to be found.
No fish on the flats caught us all by surprise, especially Vinny. The tide was perfect for them so it threw him off a bit. But not for long. Vinny had another trick up his sleeve – head for Barnstable and play in a small river.
I purposely don’t remember the names of certain spots people treat me too. That way I’m not lying when I say I don’t know where we were. This tidal river was so small Vinny’s boat barely fit. But it was full of small stripers (schoolies) and we had a blast catching them against the bank much like I do brown trout on a river back home.
We enjoyed that river scene so much Vinny took us to another much larger one. I can’t remember the name but it’s the main source to Barnstable Harbor. And though it’s a river, its deep. Some holes were more than 25 feet deep!
We caught a bunch more fish here as well. While most were schoolies I got one nice fish of 25”. We likely caught another 25 stripers in here.
Before we knew it two things had happened. The time flew by and it was 4 PM. And once again, Rick and I pummeled more than 50 stripers in a day. Sure, the 30 plus incher eluded us, but what fantastic fishing I’ve had this week.
Today was my last big day of fishing here in Cape Cod. I will wet a line some tomorrow however. Tomorrow I teach my full day seminar to the Cape Cod Flyrodders. The theme of the day is tricks and tactics for fly fishing from the beach and our day will start at 7 AM on the Chatham beach and will end with me delivering my PowerPoint presentation, “Fly Fishing in Baja”.