By The fishing has been on fire in the Boston Harbor this week! We’ve gotten out on three separate occasions and between them have boated more than seven dozen fish! There’s been an invasion of schoolies everywhere in the harbor which have provided endless entertainment on light tackle and on the fly, with many double and triple headers. The bigger fish have been in the low to mid thirties and have all been taken on big plugs or live mackerel.
Mackerel are still super easy to find out at the ledges and haven’t been taking more than 15-30 mins to get a livewell full of a couple dozen. Pogies are starting to trickle into the Boston Harbor channel, around Thompson’s island, and around Nut Island. With mackerel so easy to get, we haven’t tried pogies yet and haven’t seen any big fish on the pogies just yet either. That said, we haven’t really been out looking for pogies either. Many reports of big schools in the harbor, which is usually very apparent – just not there yet from what we can see. We also started losing lures to the blues, so they’re starting to trickle in as well…
There has been consistent action under the birds on the fly and light tackle, but has thus far been mostly micro schoolies. Countless numbers of micro schoolies so thick it seems you can walk on them. The magic has been all white bait presentations. On the fly, it’s been all white deceivers with a little flashabou about 4.5″ long. On light tackle all white Heddon Spooks, all white Rebel Jumpin Minnows, and white Hogy Pro Paddle Tails have been the go to. At one point early in the morning there was a blitz that filled from Long Island to Spectacle Island, with every cast getting hit! Break out the binoculars at sunrise and sunset. You’ll find them!
Working top water around the boulder fields has been really productive but mostly schoolies. We tried upsizing and still couldn’t keep the schoolies off the lures! Starting with the same Jumpin Minnow as above, and eventually working our way up to 3.5oz Danny pencil poppers and even 9″ Musky Mania Doc were just getting hit time and time again. The other productive lure has been the pink and white 24/7 Lures Needlefish. Gotta be a bunch of squid in the harbor.
Tight Lines,
– Captain Nick