Dear Fishermen and Friends,
Bait, Bait and Bait. Without Bait, you don’t have a fishery. Without food, you can’t get customers to a restaurant. When people ask where do we go fish. Fish where the bait is, because then you’ll find the fish. How do you know where the bait is? First, look for birds. Birds don’t just fly for exercise; they are generally working a food source. Often though, we find bait without birds. Bait generally gets pushed by the currents and falls into predictable patterns. If it’s your first time on the water, you may not know yet what the patterns are, but you will. Usually look for moving water. Any time the tide is moving is good for fishing, when the tide is slack, there is nothing to push the bait and they can disappoint.
I’m bringing up bait because I can’t remember having so much bait in our fishery. I’ve fished here for twenty years, which is not long, but in speaking with a lot of friends, they agree. We have loads of sand eels inshore, Bunker, Squid, Herring, and Mackerel. The variety and quantity are insane. We are very confident that the large amount of big bait is because of the lack of squid boats so bait is getting through and naturally. Does this finally prove our point?! As for the mature sand eels, our guess is the warm pop in March pushed a lot of the offshore bait inshore to reproduce early.
With all this bait, we have seen Tuna inshore, Mako’s leaping in the rips, a surge of Bonito, more Striped Bass than I ever remember seeing and mostly feeding top water and what feels like a lot of Bluefish compared to recent years. It feels like a National Geographic show out there.
Bluefish are making a comeback! And we love it. The easiest place to target these classic Nantucket fish is from Dionis. You can fish these guys from the beach, but from a boat it is super fun as there are acres of them. You’ll get all top water action. Great Point is now holding plenty of Blues and Bass. We have also been seeing big slicks east of the Island. These are bigger fish and hopefully the start of bigger biomass of blues coming into our waters. The timing is right as we typically see Bluefish around Nantucket in full force by early July. Keep your fingers crossed.
Striped Bass continue to be most people’s focus these days. There are tons of people fishing the South Shore. People are consistently catching fish from Madaket to Tom Nevers, but it is a more of a steady pick and the fish are still pretty small. The Sewer Beds and Madaquecham have been your best bets. But go wherever you have easy access and look for deeper water or good troughs. Whenever fishing a new stretch of beach, I stand up on the dunes and do my best to read the water. Unless I know it pretty well, you’ll often then see me walking the beach while fishing to see where fish might be congregating. The harbor is also still holding good numbers of fish as is the outside of coatue. The best bet for bigger fish is in the late evening or at night.
From the boat, look for moving water. The rips have been extremely productive. This includes both the western and eastern rips as well as the water up near Monomoy. The best bet is to look for birds on the edges and you’ll know where the bait is. If you are uncomfortable fishing that moving water, good for you! Stay in your comfort zone. The east side of the Island, specifically down near Sankaty, has had acres of fish and bait on the surface. Without a major weather change. This should hold. By the way, when we are seeing fishing like that, those fish are sure to push up on the beach as well. Especially at night.
Lastly, a fish that Nantucket is known for from Anglers on the east coast, but actually doesn’t get respected enough from most visitors to the Island is our Fluke Fishery. This is only accessible from the boat, but it is so much fun and so good! Many people think of a 10lb Fluke like a 50 lb Bass. It is a fish of a lifetime. I think I saw Bob Decosta post in Social Media this week, that fish has eluded him after all these years. And that guy can fish! Anyway, we are hearing of some big Fluke being caught these days and fish that are in that range. In fact a great friend, Norm Frazee landed a fish that weighed in at the Anglers Club at exactly 10 lbs, on Fathers Day. You deserve it my friend!
Go enjoy our evolving fishery. It is so much fun out there right now.