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Niko is right! I have never seen a fall (or season) like this in 20 years. I've been out on the haba almost every week for the last eight weeks and have yet to see a blitz. At this time of year there should be acres of bass and blues busting the surface. Clearly there are quality fish around but not in the surface numbers we have come to expect. I think it has to do with a shift in the quantity (and type) of bait fish around and the prevailing weather pattern. This is the first time in 20 years I have seen mackerel hanging around in numbers till the end of July/early August. The pogies and herring are so thick you could walk across them. Anyone remember an August where it rained every freakin' day with T storms moving constantly from south to north (even as late as a week ago)? I thing the fish are so well fed that there has been no need for them to ball up bait and rip through it. I think that explains why there's been really big bass and blues caught down deep on live pogies, eels and chunks. As an example I was drift fishing Hull Gut two weeks ago in the middle of the day with an incoming tide. There were about 20 other boats doing the same. Not two hundred yards from the channel there were massive schools of bait fish jumping out of the water by the Pemberton pier. Now these fish were not being chased by larger fish...they were feeding! We would simply drop a sibiki down...load up a bucket...and motor over to the channel and bounce them off the bottom. Whammo, four ten pound Blues and a 36" striper in less than a half hour. Now one would think that these fish would have ripped through the bait ball over by the pier...but no...they simply stayed down deep in the channel waiting to be force-fed. I think we have a bunch of fat, lazy, unmotivated fish out there...sort of like our political leaders.
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