Flaptail
10-04-2006, 08:06 AM
Alas, I am back at the office. Sigh... just reminiscing over the period from 9/15 to 10/1.
Had a good vacation. Fishing was better than last year by far. The outer beach owed me and it paid up. It was work trying to find them but if you fish certain outer beaches at low tide between the innner beach and outer bars troughs there were fish to be had and on several nights it proved worthy of comparison of the "good ol' days".
No big fish but a good measure of twenty pounders. It was strange to see how deserted the beaches became after 10 oclock at night. Crowds till then then poof! All alone (except for Zeke).
I don't know where they all went but I was glad they left and left me to the fish. Low tide was better than high in the places I was fishing. Two lures were stand out. Al Gag's 7 inch needlefish and the new 6" Rapala X-Rap. On the nights of the 18th/19th and 20th/21st I had near 70 fish landed combined to a high of 26 pounds. Most were small legals and very few were under. A friend fishing eels took 8 on the second night while I was on constantly with a white Gag's needlefish. We were side by side all night and it started in a very nice thunder storm with multiple lightning bolts coming down all around. The bass did not care.
The third night, that being the 21st/22nd it went east and the mung showed up. I landed only one little fish before declaring it unfishable. The next batch showed on the night of the 23rd/24th and they showed a preference for the x-rap. Record shows eleven landed with multiple hits to a high in the mid teens for poundage.
The following Monday night ,the 25th shows eleven again to the mid teens but they went back on the white needle again, friend fishing eels with me got one.
Tuesday night the 26th was slow with Numbskull and I taking a few dinks on all black swimmers.
All in all the fishing, though by most standards was below what it was in the old days, was good for what I had experienced most of the season which was dismal failure on the outer Cape. You had to work for them. For instance, the first night I found them I had fished from 5:30 in the evening to 1:30 in the morning without a tap then stumbled into this one hole and caught fish for 4 and a half hours straight. Next night we sat in the truck mostly taking an occasional cast from 8 pm to 1:45am and at the appointed time caught fish on almost every cast after that.
The desertion of the beaches in the wee hours of the night was really surprising and the lack of effort being put in was astonishing. They were trucks from NJ, CT and NY all done up with rods everywhere and coolers and racks and guys dressed like they just stepped out of the surfcaster catalog but by 10 in the eveing, they were gone. They would all pile on the beaches again at 4:30am. By then the fishing was OVA. Well, gotta wait till June now. But then again I took a 44 inch fish from a Cape Cod Bay beach last night under a 3/4 moon peeking out in between clouds while casting a yellow Gag's needle. So there is hope!:wavey:
Had a good vacation. Fishing was better than last year by far. The outer beach owed me and it paid up. It was work trying to find them but if you fish certain outer beaches at low tide between the innner beach and outer bars troughs there were fish to be had and on several nights it proved worthy of comparison of the "good ol' days".
No big fish but a good measure of twenty pounders. It was strange to see how deserted the beaches became after 10 oclock at night. Crowds till then then poof! All alone (except for Zeke).
I don't know where they all went but I was glad they left and left me to the fish. Low tide was better than high in the places I was fishing. Two lures were stand out. Al Gag's 7 inch needlefish and the new 6" Rapala X-Rap. On the nights of the 18th/19th and 20th/21st I had near 70 fish landed combined to a high of 26 pounds. Most were small legals and very few were under. A friend fishing eels took 8 on the second night while I was on constantly with a white Gag's needlefish. We were side by side all night and it started in a very nice thunder storm with multiple lightning bolts coming down all around. The bass did not care.
The third night, that being the 21st/22nd it went east and the mung showed up. I landed only one little fish before declaring it unfishable. The next batch showed on the night of the 23rd/24th and they showed a preference for the x-rap. Record shows eleven landed with multiple hits to a high in the mid teens for poundage.
The following Monday night ,the 25th shows eleven again to the mid teens but they went back on the white needle again, friend fishing eels with me got one.
Tuesday night the 26th was slow with Numbskull and I taking a few dinks on all black swimmers.
All in all the fishing, though by most standards was below what it was in the old days, was good for what I had experienced most of the season which was dismal failure on the outer Cape. You had to work for them. For instance, the first night I found them I had fished from 5:30 in the evening to 1:30 in the morning without a tap then stumbled into this one hole and caught fish for 4 and a half hours straight. Next night we sat in the truck mostly taking an occasional cast from 8 pm to 1:45am and at the appointed time caught fish on almost every cast after that.
The desertion of the beaches in the wee hours of the night was really surprising and the lack of effort being put in was astonishing. They were trucks from NJ, CT and NY all done up with rods everywhere and coolers and racks and guys dressed like they just stepped out of the surfcaster catalog but by 10 in the eveing, they were gone. They would all pile on the beaches again at 4:30am. By then the fishing was OVA. Well, gotta wait till June now. But then again I took a 44 inch fish from a Cape Cod Bay beach last night under a 3/4 moon peeking out in between clouds while casting a yellow Gag's needle. So there is hope!:wavey: