Mackerel and Buzzard's Bay

Last weekend I decided to take a shot at catching some live mackerel. The fishing reports I've been reading are saying that mackerel schools have definitely moved in closer and can be caught from the South to the North shores of MA.

The last trip I took last year was down to Buzzard's bay. It was the first time I had fished that area and since the weather was calm, I took the boat all the way out to Cuttyhunk Island. I vowed to return the next year.

On Saturday I was up early (2:30) and headed down to Sandwich and put in at the town marina on Ed Moffitt Drive. I was at the dock just as the sun was coming up and headed about a mile out from the East end of Cape Cod Canal. It was pretty clear what the strategy was, there was a small fleet of boats out there, and everybody was jigging for Mackerel.

I had brought several rods with me and had two light weight jobs rigged up with sabiki rigs. One was a store bought model and the other I had hand tied the night before using some saltwater streamer flies I had received as a Christmas gift the year prior.

It didn't take too long to hook up. In about 30 minutes I had 4 mackerel in the live well. Things slowed down pretty quickly and by about 8:30 I was pretty much the only boat left in the area.

So, I headed back through the canal into Buzzards bay. I've never been through the canal before. It was interesting seeing all those canal "rats" fishing from shore. I saw at least 3 guys reeling in stripers during the 40 minutes or so that it took me to traverse the Canal. It sure is hard keeping it under 10 mph and no wake. Fortunately I didn't get a ticket!

Once I got into Buzzards Bay I cut the engine and drifted. It must have been around 9:30 by then. I took one of the live mackerel and hooked it up to my bait casting rig. I hooked the mackerel right through the nostrils and tossed it out to drift and left the reel in free spool.

In about 10 minutes the line was screaming off the reel and I was having visions of MY first striper of the season (see previous post). I know you should let the fish run with your bait for a while, and since I was using circle hooks, I also know you're not supposed to set the hook the way your father taught you. Just turn off the free spool switch, take up the slack, and let the fish hook itself. Right? Couldn't be any easier, right?

That's exactly what I did, and felt the tug of a striper on the other end. Started reeling in the sucker and just as it got to the boat it came off. Turns out I had never actually hooked it as I was left with just the head of the mackerel, still hooked through the nostrils. The body had been completely ripped off.

I tried again with another mackerel...same thing... only this time I let the striper run with it longer. Same results. And same results with the third mackerel.

They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Guess I was a little insane that day.

So at this point I was down to one mackerel and it was already dead in the livewell. I decided to use it as chunk bait but couldn't get anymore hits with it.

After a couple of hours of this I decided to do a little bottom fishing. I motored over to Cleveland ledge and tooled around for a while checking to see if I could mark any fish on the fish finder, and see if I could find any rocky structure. I have a Humminbird fish finder that has side scanning sonar on it. It's a pretty cool device and it really does give you a decent view of the bottom.

Once I found a likely spot, I anchored up and started jigging the bottom with a 3 oz lead weight and a hook tied on a dropper loop about 18 inches up. I was using 6 inch Berkely Gulp Alive! Sandworms. These things really do work. I caught about 10 scup and a little black sea bass.

Lessons Learned:
1. I really can catch mackerel with a sabiki rig. It's the first time I've done that.

2. Folks aren't kidding when they say to hold up on reeling in when you get a mackerel on the line. The four I caught were both double hook ups. When you get mackerel on the line, keep jigging, you can actually feel the next one getting hooked up. When you think you've left the rig in the water long enough, leave it in some more. I'm convinced I could have caught 3 or 4 at a time if I had done this.

3. Live lining mackerel definitely works. But next time I'm going to hook them through the dorsal fin instead of through the nose.

4. Berkely Gupl Alive! sandworms do catch fish. They may not be as good as the real thing, but they sure are easier to keep. And you don't have to head to a bait shop the night before or early in the morning to pick some up. This has always been a problem for me since there are no decent salt water bait shops near where I live.

Katy's First Striper...

...unfortunately, she had to go to Phoenix Arizona to catch it.

During the second week of May, Katy and I were fortunate enough to attend a combination vacation/business trip paid for by the company I work for.

They put us up at the Biltmore Resort & Spa in Phoenix for 3 nights/4 days. For the "vacation" part of the trip, there were about a dozen different activities that you could sign up for. The most interesting one in my opinion was an afternoon of bass fishing on Lake Pleasant.

Katy, being the consummate fisherman's wife, agreed to join me on this little adventure whereas other couples opted to enjoy massages at the spa and or attend wine tasting and cooking classes.

We took a bus from the hotel at about 12:30 pm for the 45 minute ride out to the lake. There were about 30-40 people who signed up for this little excursion. When we got to the lake, there several boats (and guides) for us to choose from. The boats ranged from the usual "Nitro" style fresh water bass boats to pontoon boats that could take about 15 people. We settled on a "bay" boat and ended up with a total of 8 anglers including the two of us.

Tackle was medium weight spinning rods about 6 feet in length. Some were spooled with mono, others with braid. All were rigged for bottom fishing either as drop shot rigs or Carolina rigs. The bait we used were fresh water anchovies, cut up in 1 inch chunks.

We fished a couple of different spots, starting in about 150 feet of water (which proved fruitless) until we settled on a spot the guide referred to as "Jack Ass Cove", with water depths in the 20-30 foot range. 33°52'39.60"N 112°15'33.13"W

The name as he explained it was due to the fact that there were numerous feral donkeys that frequented that part of the shoreline. Left overs from the days when gold prospectors worked the area. Sure enough, after about 30 minutes we all heard that familiar bray. looked to the shore, and there was "donkey" coming down from the hills for a drink.

There were only 2 folks on our boat that actually landed fish. I was not one of them. Katy was. I think the smile on her face pretty much sums up the moment. An angler is born!

Shad fishing at Rocks Village

I remember going shad fishing once with the old man when I was a kid. We came home with buckets of shad that day. I was standing in a small stream bringing up shad with a dip net. I think it was the first spring after we had moved from South Carolina up to Tewksbury, MA I'm not entirely sure it was legal, but I suspect the statute of limitations has expired by now.

Shad are an anadromous fish, which is to say that they spend their adult lives in the sea, returning to coastal rivers to spawn. The Atlantic Shad, which runs here in MA, is the largest member of the herring family. They are filter feeders, but will strike at brightly colored lures called "shad darts" during the spawn. These days folks fish for shad with a rod and reel. Ultra-light spinning tackle seems to be the equipment of choice, with longer rods around the 7 foot range.




There was a pretty decent write up in the March issue of On the Water magazine about a place called Rocks Village on the banks of the Merrimack River in Haverhill, MA. If you're a google earth user, the place is 42°48'38.14"N 70°59'50.03"W

Yesterday, I took a spin up to Haverhill to check out the situation. I took along my neoprene waders and some ultra light tackle. The weather was pretty lousy with light drizzle and temps around 50. I found a little bait & tackle shop on route 110 in Merrimac, MA that had a decent selection of shad darts so I picked up 15 or so in various sizes and colors and headed over to the spot mentioned in On The Water.

There were about 5 guys fishing from shore when I got there at noon, and a couple of small john boats anchored just off shore. I fished there for about 3 hours but didn't get a single strike. I did manage to lose about 5 darts though. Nobody else seemed to be getting any hits either.

There were a number of small birds flying close to shore and it looked like they were hovering over bait fish. None of them were actually diving into the water though. I'm not sure what was holding their attention but I suspect it might have been river herring. There have been lots of reports of river herring moving into the coastal rivers of MA. In fact, there was a sign posted at the spot that mentioned that possessing river herring is currently illegal in MA. If you do any amount of striper fishing, you already know about that.

So, I have to mark this day down as a "skunk". It still beats a good day at work though.