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Originally Posted by Back Beach
Flap,
What about sept/oct 2001, 2002, 2003 on the back, just to mention a few?Where were you? Maybe not the isolated monomoy fishing with the tin boats like you mentioned, but just as many fish, if not more many nights. Same size fish, if not bigger many nights. Lots of guys that were there in the 70's say it was better in the 90's and early 2000's at times. Real fishermen, not lackeys, said this and mentioned outside of 77,78, and fall of 81, the fishing has been much better in the latter days, meaning now. The outer cape has unquestionably fallen apart since 2003, and I can sympathize with you there. When you mention all the 70's stuff you make it sound like nothing has happened out there since 1978, and it just isn't the case. No question you have some good memories like everyone else, but you constantly lament the fishing now compared to then, and its only been a couple years since it went sour. I think it will come back at some point, just can't say when, but it will. Hang in there, dude.
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I went back to the beach full time so to say in 2001. For 11 years before then I fished strictly ( let's just say I was brainwashed into a cult) with a flyrod. Momonoy. Barnstable and the Elizabeth Islands were my haunts ( I averaged 33 plus days a year stalking the flats of Monomoy alone) After all that time the biggest fish I landed was 32 pounds on the flats or anywhere with the flyrod. Stifftip would call me and say he was catching on eel or plugging on the outer beach and I would cower in horror at the thought of such a barbarian way to take fish. I recovered my senses. In the fall of 2000 I went to the beach (Balstons to be exact) with a nine foot spinning rod with dusted off Penn 650ss and a plastic box with a dozen old rebels and such in it. I walked north to a point and rounded it to see before me a bowl in between two bar edges. I felt clumsy as I had not done that in a long time. With the box of plugs shoved down between my waders and my chest I snapped on a blue 7 inch Rebel. I caught fish for 3 hours, several in the 30 pound class and many in the 20 pound range. I didn't pick up a flyrod for almost three years after that night.
I recall the 70's and early 80's because they were the times I had the most fun, it was all new and exciting. One of the best periods of my life. The friends I had who are now gone for the most part. Places like Monomoy were wide open, no one ever borthered you if you landed there and not many people did land there to fish.
Yeah, maybe the 90' and early in this new century had good fishing, maybe as good as then, but the restrictions were being enforced on beach travel, the seals were beginning to be spoken of more and more and the big hits were beginning to be subtly noticed as being fewer and fewer. The best night I had in the last 30 years was in September 2003. It started at 7:30 at night at Hatches with a 31 pounder first cast on a BASSMASTER needlefish and ended , with fish still being caught, in exhaustion at 8:30 the next morning. Stifftip will tell you of LaFleur and I calling him on his cell phone and leaving messages with only the sound of our drags screaming as he fished a fishless Squibnocket Beach on the Vineyard. He had been with me every night that week as the fishing built and built but he had made a promise to go to MV to a friend for a night and he knew what was going to happen. The seals are the number one problem, no doubt in my mind. There will be no prolonged old days again until that problem is solved.