Fletcher Fishing

posted by John on Jun 9

New boat at the cape, 1985 Grady White Seafarer hull with a 2004 Volvo Penta Engine and I/O Drive.  I had a little trouble starting this beast, because I thought I was flooding the engine. It turned out that I did not have enough gas. With it started at 10:00 am on the day I was going to take out some soldiers for Rich Wood’s annual veterans fishing program, time was of the essence. I had to run to Newcombs Hollow Beach to get my brother, since cell coverage sucks at the ocean. Once collected, we hot-footed it to Truro’s Pamet Harbor, a small inlet off of Cape Cod Bay near Provincetown. We missed it by a nose, one last boat was dropping and no more could park there. There was no way to make the pick up time of 12:30 at Macmillan Pier. We dropped in Wellfleet and motored on up to Race Point. I had never seen as many boats as I did this day. There must have been 150 boats. We fished a good bit and caught two nice 34-36″ fish, and a couple of smaller fish. No pics, sadly

Monday June 8th was a much better fishing day. I picked up my brother at Pamet Harbor at 5:50 am for a morning fishing trip to Race Point. he had to catch a flight and we wanted maximum fishing time. The boat was docked in Wellfleet and with the tide racing out, I left there at 4:50 for the long slog around Billingsgate Island. Pamet was also low and running out when I got there and with about 1 foot to spare we tip-toed out to the Bay.

The waters at Race Point were devoid of fishing vessels, save two or three. We entered the fishing ledge at slack tide and started marking fish. We threw topwaters and plastics, and kept working our way north up the ledge. The drift was funky today, a few degrees west of south, so your pass over the drop off was fast. About an hour after low tide, the bite was on. We used sluggos to jig up 10 keepers with the largest at ~40 inches and 20 lb class. The fight was about 10-12 minutes before I even saw the fish, then as I had it against the boat and attempted to boat the fish (no net, I know bad idea). He broke the 14 lb mono and took my jig head. The rest of the fish were good sized 32-36″ 10-15 lbs. Today is the first day I ever caught a sand eel, then used him live to catch a fish. These fish were slurping sand eels so hard the jigs were treated to the same. I let go one bleeder, I hope he survives.

Here are the pics.

Nice Fish

We doubled up with two great keepers

Second biggest fish of the day!

Another great fish!

posted by John on Jun 9

I could not have had a better time with no boat. While the boats are finding schools of feeding bass, the shore fisherman are catching squat (not really, just alot less). Although on Wednesday May 27, the fish were biting at the canal right at the parking lot on the scenic highway (RT6, mainland side). I caught mine (barely legal) on a green ronzi. My attempts at getting to the bottom resulted in losing all the jig heads that I brought. Some of the guys were using cut bait, some were using pencil poppers. No one else caught a fish while I was there, but one guy had a nice keeper way bigger than the fish I threw back.

posted by John on Jun 8

Early fishing in the Chesapeake Bay yeilded one great Striped Bass. About 36-38″, this guy was a beefer. We were jigging around Podickery Point in the Chesapeake Bay, just north of the Bay Bridge, on April 5th and I got blasted by this leviathan. I think the fish weighed 15-20 lbs. The Chesapeake Bay is a cruel mistress. While I never seem to catch big ones, the bay throws one of these my way every so often to keep me buying a fishing license every year. At the time of this picture, the Bay is strictly catch and release in the early season, so this fish lived to spawn another day.