Outer Cape-My fall trip report - Striper Talk Striped Bass Fishing, Surfcasting, Boating

Blitzseeker · 10-01-2001, 09:34 AM

Perhaps this should be in the "reports" section...John, feel free to move it if you think it should be there.

Just got back yesterday from my annual fall trip to the Outer Cape. In summary, "Wow!".

I met seven of my buddies out there last Tuesday night. Collectively, my conservative estimate is that between the eight of us we probably caught around 50-60 fish apiece through Sunday morning. 95% bass, 5% bluefish. Would have caught more, but there were quite a few beer breaks and we slept in one morning.

We had bass to 35 pounds.....many in the 25 to 30 pound range. Forty to forty-five inch fish were plentiful. Largest fish I actually saw with my own eyes was a 46 incher that weighed in at 39 pounds on the nose. As I'm sure you all know by now, a 58 pounder was weighed in and rumor had it there was a 62 pounder caught by a local. Every beach on the Outer Cape was on fire.

I relearned a valuable lesson.....when it is so windy that it is almost impossible to fish, it is actually the best conditions you could hope for. We continually fished one bar that the strong Northeast winds were hammering, pushing bait over to waiting fish. We had to come up with some inventive ways to get our plugs even 10 yards from us, but that's all you needed. If you could get a plug in the water, you were catching big fish. The beauty of is was that only people with a fair amount of surf fishing experience could handle the conditions, so while most people were complaining that the Northeast wind was killing the fishing we were just hammering them.

This trip renewed my faith in our supply of stripers. This was a slow summer for me, but for the last few days it seemed as if every striper in the world was in the water right in front of my section of beach.

Caught some bluefish on top as well, which is among my favorite things to do.

This was some of the best fishing I've ever been a part of...it made my season. Which, by the way, is not over. RI, here I come! These big fish should be getting there any time now.