They call me Mr. Squidward

On Sunday June 1, a college friend of mine and I headed out and tried the same game plan as the last time. Get on the water before sun up, try our luck at getting some live mackerel, and then see if we could parlay them into a keeper striper or two.

We headed to the same spot where I caught the 4 mackerel the week before and we really tore them up this time. Within about 90 minutes we had over 50 mackerel. We were like a couple of kids fishing, it was just too fun to stop.

My buddy also caught a squid that morning. I've heard that you can catch squid on a rod and reel but I've never seen it done. We kept it most of the day and tried cutting it up into strips for bait but didn't have any luck with it. Next time maybe we'll try using Mr. Crab or Sponge Bob.

After we filled up the bait well with mackerel, we headed north to Plymouth Bay and the Gurnet to try live lining some of the mackerel we had caught. We were chatting with the guy from Riptide charters before we left the dock that morning and that's where he said he was headed.

Unfortunately for us, no stripers were to be had. There were 20+ other boats in the area and nobody was catching anything.

Lessons Learned:
You can put 5 mackerel in the bait well, and they'll stay alive for most of the day. If you put 50 macks in there, they all die in about 15 minutes. We were lucky enough to catch 3 more up in Plymouth, but we still didn't have any luck using them.

Mackerel tend to hit the sabiki rig on the drop. You jig up, let the rig flutter back down, and most of the hits happen then.

Smoked mackerel isn't half bad. I'll have to report back on how pickled mackerel tastes in another week or so.

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!