native brookie wrote:
Battenkiller wrote:
I'm going to be spending four days on Cape Cod Bay instead of my traditional trip to the Dacks on Columbus Day weekend.
Stripers? Sea-run brookies on the Quashnet or Red Brook?
My best afternoon ever for stripers was on Nauset Beach in October. Huge shoals of sand eels were on the beach front, with stripers, bluefish and gray seals behind them and feeding hard. Gulls and terns like a Hitchcock movie were working the beach edge. When a big swell rose up with the sun behind it, you could see the bluefish and stripers swimming as if they were in an illuminated aquarium.
Wading in the surf wash with the gray seals feeding just beyond us in chest deep water was kind of spooky, and really really cool.
I would think a poled canoe would be a great way to chase stripers on the flats where it's more protected.
Oh, yeah...
big stripers. At least that's what the reports say. Only they're blitzing off Race Point now, so maybe I won't even get in a canoe. What with the winds they're predicting, I don't think anybody except the most experienced sea kayakers should have anything to do with that surf.
Nauset is always a good bet in the fall. Sand eels during the day, live eels during the night. I like Nauset because it's so steep. The big guys come right up into the foam. Those damn seals, though. Never had a good day fishing for stripers when they're around. I've seen big chopper blues busting the surface without a care in the world when the seals are around. Pays to have a set of formidable teeth.
If we don't have any luck at the Race, we'll scoot over to Heering Cove and toss the canoe in there if conditions aren't too bad. I hate to fish from it, but it's a real good way to chase down those distant birds that are working over the blitzing fish. I've chased them by foot before and watched the blitz move along at the same speed I was jogging at. Very frustrating, not to mention totally exhausting.