Fished lower Buzzards Bay/Woods Hole/Vineyard sound Saturday, frequently in very thick fog with about 100' visibility. Flat calm, very few boats around, and pods of funny fish EVERYWHERE. The most I have ever seen. My buddy Ben took one right away on a yozuri crippled herring style spoon--turned out to be a spanish mack and his first exotic fish, which was nice.
The amount of fish alone made the trip fantastic, but unbelievably frustrating as I never even hooked up. There were fish rocketing out of the water everywhere--small macks and what I believe were bones, and definitely big Albies. However, they were finicky as hell and very skittish--in fact they were generally completely unapproachable. Since no one was around, I tried every boat approach from mild run and gun, to slow steady throttle, to slow appproach with a quick engine kill, to dead drifting with engine off, but we got very few quality shots into the pods, and when we did, they snuffed everything--bunnies, small epoxies, sparse Ray's flies, juve pogie deceivers, and small tin and bucktails on the spinning rods.
With almost no current out in the bay, it's tough to set up a "drift" and hope you float into a pod, as I have been able to do in canal for instance.
There was a ton of bait of various varieties. The spanish mack caughed up a few 1-2" pogies, bu I saw both smaller and bigger bait up to 4-5" in the water. COming back to the ramp defeted, i saw an older guy in a beat up boat filleting two bones, and he had a large white bomber on a spinning rod--I am having a tough time thinking he took those fish on such a huge lure but who knows. My instinct was to drop down to tiny #6 flies, but in all the excitement of just getting to the fish, i never made it below a # 2 pattern.
Simply an incredible day of witnessing and trying to learn fish behavior...and surprisingly no rude boaters in the fog, which was great, but I would have liked one fish for my effort! Any funny fish experts care to enlighten me? I am all ears.
Jeff
p.s.--as an aside, Sunday I went out into Boston harbor, which was just loaded with acres of finning bass. They too were more finicky than normal, but very catchable. Still no blues for me in the harbor though, which was all I was getting this time last year...
The amount of fish alone made the trip fantastic, but unbelievably frustrating as I never even hooked up. There were fish rocketing out of the water everywhere--small macks and what I believe were bones, and definitely big Albies. However, they were finicky as hell and very skittish--in fact they were generally completely unapproachable. Since no one was around, I tried every boat approach from mild run and gun, to slow steady throttle, to slow appproach with a quick engine kill, to dead drifting with engine off, but we got very few quality shots into the pods, and when we did, they snuffed everything--bunnies, small epoxies, sparse Ray's flies, juve pogie deceivers, and small tin and bucktails on the spinning rods.
With almost no current out in the bay, it's tough to set up a "drift" and hope you float into a pod, as I have been able to do in canal for instance.
There was a ton of bait of various varieties. The spanish mack caughed up a few 1-2" pogies, bu I saw both smaller and bigger bait up to 4-5" in the water. COming back to the ramp defeted, i saw an older guy in a beat up boat filleting two bones, and he had a large white bomber on a spinning rod--I am having a tough time thinking he took those fish on such a huge lure but who knows. My instinct was to drop down to tiny #6 flies, but in all the excitement of just getting to the fish, i never made it below a # 2 pattern.
Simply an incredible day of witnessing and trying to learn fish behavior...and surprisingly no rude boaters in the fog, which was great, but I would have liked one fish for my effort! Any funny fish experts care to enlighten me? I am all ears.
Jeff
p.s.--as an aside, Sunday I went out into Boston harbor, which was just loaded with acres of finning bass. They too were more finicky than normal, but very catchable. Still no blues for me in the harbor though, which was all I was getting this time last year...