I my experience (roughly the last 20 years) this past year has been probably a bit below par in my experience, but I have changed tactics quite a bit as well. I am a south shore guy, and spring time would typically focus efforts in the rivers and bays trying to find some willing bass that were chasing herring into the runs. I haven't looked all too closely at the herring return numbers, but I do recall reading somewhere that the Nemasket run numbers were significantly lower than that last couple years- not sure if any of the south shore numbers were at a historical lows or highs (NSRWA loosely estimates numbers at ~90,000) and not sure if it was simply the herring and bass migration patterns didn't sync up as they had 5+ years ago, but the quantities of large bass simply never congregated in the rivers like they had in the past. We used to have fish from 12" to 40# + in and around the rivers all season long...they might still be around, but simply not in the numbers they were...from what I found?
I was prob. 90% boat/10% shore at dawn/dusk for my first 15 years of bass fishing, but hedging more towards shore based surfcasting over the last few years (this season was probably 70% shore, 30% boat)...most of this is due to finding a few like minded buddies to traverse the rocks with and fishing mostly at night. I also greatly expanded my fishing terrain, where I was historically only Scituate/Marshfield, and then Ply/Dux/King bays, and now I have expanded from Hull down to Barnstable for bayside efforts, in addition to numerous other areas from the canal to south cape MA to Cutty and SoCo RI.
In my experience the south shore was more "punches in bunches" and not much for a residential population this year. We had a couple nice waves of fish move through in June and again in July, and then seemingly heading south again in early/mid August when it seemed virtually the entire breeding biomass of fish congregated around the canal for a 3 week bonanza of some of the craziest fishing one could handle. I won't disagree that I had some moments of feeling like this was the "last of the buffalo" occurring right in front of me with what I perceived as too many breeders being removed from the biomass by too many short-sighted anglers harvesting fish simply to harvest fish.
Fall has been a bust for anything of size, but encouraged by the incredible numbers of 12-16" schoolies that are currently gorging themselves on peanuts, silversides & brit herring...last season my home waters were inundated with the 2011 class of fish- all seemingly 25-27.5"...they were everywhere, but they didn't seem to show up this year in the same numbers? All I know is that each year is different, bass & forage migration patterns are not exactly set in stone, and where they congregate varies to some extent every season. I was elated to catch a 34" bass this weekend on a sluggo from my boat tight to shore in Scituate that put a genuine smile on my face. That alone will get me to keep coming back
