Fletcher Fishing

posted by John on Jun 12

Provincetown comes together annually to celebrate our military veterans and thank them for their service to our country. Compared to what we owe them, it is a small gesture. Boats from all over the cape take our veterans out on a half day fishing trip.

Morning:

We had Jerry and Tyler on the boat. Jerry served our country in Afghanistan and received a purple heart during his service when a wall fell over on him. Thankfully he survived to tell his tale. They had been fishing, but never light tackle jigging for striped bass. After showing them how to cast a spinning rod, we set them on some fish. Only the fish really did not cooperate where we were. We marked fish, and threw lures, and jigged our butts off. We changed out many lures and tried all sorts of different presentations, nothing. Tyler was getting the hang of casting and while everyone was wetting a line, Tyler calls out, “I think I got one!”. One glance and he was definitely hooked up. The pole was bent. He did it all himself from casting to bring it alongside the boat. If there was any salvation from this trip, it was seeing the pride and satisfaction on Tyler’s face when he caught a big fish.

Here is a pic of Tyler’s fish.

Back at the dock for a group picture.

Afternoon:

We had Gene and Carol on board for the afternoon trip. Carol is a member of the Vermont National Guard who served in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the boat got skunked. We did not know it or have the right equipment at the time, but the fish were going after black umbrella rigs. We did get a hook up when a school surfaced. We nailed him with a yellow mambo minnow, but the fish shook the hook. With an east wind it was tough. One thing we got to do was take a nice boat ride to the mouth of Hatches Harbor and they got to see a group of seals playing and scaring away any fish.

posted by John on Jun 2

If you were where I was today you got a great blitz at the high slack tide, around 12:30pm. Birds were working the scene as usual. Waves in the confluence of the currents were about 4-6ft with a real short period with the winds honking from the NW.

I thought I might hide from the winds before the blitz by cruising around the bar down to the GB (O). Big bass (20 lbs and up) loaded up. There were breaking schools and birds all over. The weird part was they were eating something small, I could not get them to bite any lure. I saw some really small sand eels, but it did not look like that was what was frothing the water to get away. Not a boat in sight, due to snotty conditions no doubt. Is there some smaller bait the size of a cricket?

Any way I put in three hours of every small lure and presentation direction, surface and depth. I had a few pull downs, but with my small lures, the bass spit the bait or I could not set the hook.

It was when I was heading back that I came upon the blitz in the worst waves ever. 14 fish later, 10 bass and 4 blues, and I had dinner for tonight. The best lure was the yellow mambo minnow 7″. The biggest bass was 35″, maybe 20 lbs, and the rest were 30+”. The blues were huge, all over 30″. I think the blues are what bent the hooks on the mambo minnow.

All 9 bass (1 for me) and three blues were released unharmed. One blue had a real bad problem, when released he floated while bleeding out, so I retrieved him with the net to smoke tonight.