No Dave, canoe fish don't count!!!!
Hooper, I commercial fished from shore on Monomoy in the late seventies and early eighties. Took the skiff out and landed on shore, we would walk for miles catching, marking our fish then tossing them up on the beach to be collected on the way back in the morning as we walked the miles to the skiff. Start at sundown and still be fishing as the eastern sky started to lighten up. Surfcasting on Monomoy was the only place I have ever been spooled, 250 yds. of Twenty pound test. The fish took a seven inch windcheater in the first wave and the rest is history. I had one night where three of us took a total of 33 bass over 30 pounds ( and we really didn't know what we were doing), I had one night where I took eleven and the smallest was 38 pounds and the biggest was 42 pounds. Back then we never measured fish we called them by weight not length. Average pick was 5 to 7 bass a night all 30 pounders on average. Never, ever saw a seal and there were sand-eel by the zillions. I remember when the whole gang of us from Worcester hit the island one Friday night and in the morning lined up in front of the four beached skiffs are 40 odd bass from 15 to 40 pounds.
My friend Dave Laporte aka Stifftip, and a friend of his took 1000 pounds plus in one tide in October of 1978 with eels on that beach. The island was wide open then you caould land on any part of it and surfcast away. The break in the island in 78' actually was the start of the end of the great surfcasting there with all the shoaling of the sand. It was the start of the flats fishing era though. When I think of what we had there then and what we have there now I want to cry.