bait in the ditch
 

Hit the Sagamore Rec area... nothing doin so I headed over to the East End. I ran into small schoolies bustin up some bait trapped in the mooring basin. This seems to happen every year about this time. Anyway, some of the bait got beached on the bubble weed and I can't remember ever seeing bait like this before. I'm pretty sure they were anchovies since they were really slender and had the underslung mouth. Is it common to see them in MA waters?

Half beaks probably

scoobe it's probably atlantic silversides about maybe 2-3" long?

Sounds similar to some bait some blues were coughing up down in Wellfleet the other day...I had never seen it before!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:A...silverside.jpg

that it?

check this out...
 

Striped Bass Seine Survey

scroll down the page for color fish ID pictures.

Yeah Scott...looks like them!

Thats what we had in barnstable harbor last friday...

I know what silversides look like and this definitely wasn't that. The reason I think they were anchovies is the underslung mouth. I can't recall any other baitfish that has a large, underslung mouth like that. First pic is what they look liked. Second pic shows how the mouth was. They were about 4 inches.

Those do look like bay anchovies, Scoob. We used to get a lot of them around Montauk--usually among the first, along with mullet, of the so-called "white baits" of the early fall run. On LI, the Atlantic silverside is called a spearing.

I think it's a sign that the water is still abnormally warm for mid-October around the east end.