Friday at Monomoy...

[Big Vern]

I fished the rips at the tip of Monomoy on Friday afternoon/evening on the first few hours of the outgoing. Threw sand eels out there on fishfinder and hi/lo set ups, and managed three stripers (one keeper - 34 inches), two small blues, and the biggest damn dogfish we'd EVER seen. Thing was almost five and a half feet long.

Herein lies a question: We got few dogfish, and were wondering if there were any ways to avoid the things. Any ideas? Should we have switched our approach?

[jeffsod]

Dogfish travel in large packs so if you start getting them you have to move. We had numerous triple hookups on Dogfish east of Chatham Saturday morning and when these occurred we moved and found bass and blues nearby (within 400 yards).

[Smokey]

Last year fishing monamoy with light tackle, half oz. jig heads, we would pick up dogs if we let it sink to the bottom. By only letting it sink for five to seven seconds we started picking up blues and stripers. I heard there is alot of dogfish around monamoy and they seem to fallow the bass and blues.

[jeffsod]

That is true you do notice more dogfish hookups when letting the jig sink to the bottom but that is also where we have been hooking the larger bass lately too. We had a strange occurance Sat. morning when while fishing due east of Chatham light we found ourselves surrounded by a very large school of 9-12 pound blues which were so close to the boat you could poke their eyes out with the tip of your rod if you wanted. Even though it was fairly breezy the water immediatly surrounding the boat had a surreal calmness or glassiness to it so viewing all these fish was like being at New England Aquarium in Boston. Of course it helps to have polarized sunglasses I just wished my camera had a polarized lense to take a photo. I didn't think of putting my sunglasses over the camera lense until it was too late and they were gone. We did manage mulitple hookups and breakoffs. Had a real beauty of a fight on the flyrod until another blue decided he liked the fly too. The weird thing was how these fish were just milling about he stern of the boat and were not engaged in a feeding frenzy. I think maybe a predator in the area had them hanging close to the boat for cover. Overall we were drifting at a good clip due to the winds and they stayed with us for over ten minutes.

[bassmaster]

check this out
dump the high low rig......
take a small Bomber
rip hooks off.....
run leader up from arse of plug to the top (lip)
snell hook
put worms on
slay Bass
That is all carry on

[Big Vern]

Thanks for the help everyone, and most likely I'll try and move to a different spot when we start hooking into the dogfish. However, I'm fairly new to fishing the Monomoy rips, and am unsure if my methods for fishing this unique area are truly up to snuff.

Mainly, we try and fish the first two hours of the drop, day or night, but mostly day. We'll drift bow forward through the rips, and when we're just about right over the rip, we'll throw out sand eels hooked through the eyes on a 5/0 octopus hook on a 30 inch leader with a one ounce egg sinker above the swivel on the main line. We cast right along the ridge (Staright out from the sides of the boat, perpendicular to our path), and let the current take the rig up and over the rip. Seems to work well, and we'll throw 5 1/4 Fin-S fish on owner hooks at 'em if they're busting on the surface. Are these approaches anywhere near "productive" for this area? What are some other tactics to employ keeping in mind I'm lazy, and don't like to cast a whole lot?

Thanks.