By The Boston Harbor blitzes are starting to come into full effect now, making this a fly fisherman’s dream! We were able to get into plenty of big schoolies willing to inhale all white deceivers and topwater plugs in the 3″ range. That is if we could keep them away from the birds long enough.
While chasing schoolie stripers is fun and endless action, if bigger fish is on your menu you’ll have to get out of the blitzes. Working the edges of the blitzes with fast sinking lines and heavy lures, like 3oz crippled herring, we were able to tease a couple 30-35″ fish out of the herd. Sometimes though, they’re just super picky and not ready to eat. Monday evening was that for us. After putting in a lot of effort on the fly, plugs, live mackerel, live pogies, they just wouldn’t hit ANYTHING! We finally were able to coax a nice 31″ out on a live eel.
Pogies were everywhere and easy to snag. The seas were rough with 8-10′ seas out towards the ledges, but it didn’t take us longer than 10 minutes out there to completely fill the livewell. If too rough, we have been catching mackerel in closer to deer island light – just less plentiful than out further.
Herring are still the big bait on the blitzes with what appears to be peanut bunker starting to trickle in. Anything 3-5 inches and all white will do it, with heavy sinking tip lines or heavy lures being required to get down deep enough to find the big guys down deeper. The Hogy Pro Paddle tails have been steady producers all year and are the first thing we tie on.
This next week looks like it’ll be a rough one and we won’t get out much with the rain and 30-40 knot forecasted winds. When it finally breaks us and the boats will be headed down to the cape to get in on the albie action and should have some reports then!
Tight Lines,
-Captain Nick