| July 3, 2009 |
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With another week of wet, damp and windy conditions to deal with, we enjoyed a few days of much improved catching. Robert, Jim and Dave experienced a solid day of striper fishing on Monday with the highlights being a super hog of 47 inches at 35 pounds for Robert and a nice 32 inch striper for Jim. Dave got into the act with several 20-25 inch fish as well. The good action and crappy weather continued into Tuesday and Wednesday with a few nice keeper sized stripers (and numerous 20-25 inch fish) caught and released. Most of our stripers this past week were fly caught with others falling for a 6 inch 1/2 ounce white Sand Lance by Tufcore and on a bone colored Jumpin Minnow. The smaller stripers came up river from outside with a large a large school of juvenile sand eels and what appeared to be the start of a crab hatch at Woodbridge Island and the adjacent marsh. The larger stripers, I believe, have come downriver from the Lawrence and Haverhill areas where they have been for the past month feasting on river herring. I expect the drop back to end quickly with all this rain souring the estuary. The estuary water is no doubt soured so most of the feeding stripers will exit the flats on the tide drop and come back up with the cleaner, cooler water of the rising tide. I also expect the flats fishing at night to get even better going forward. I did hear a report of a 50 inch striper taken on an eel Tuesday night.
Steve P. reported another rather slow week around the Cape Ann areas with his best success at Candy House, Jones Creek and Niles Beach with most of the stripers in the 20-25 inch class. The wet weather is causing significant street runoff to sour up the beaches and backwaters. Steve also reported several good feeds happening around the beaches, but just out of reach from the surf. I personally witnessed a big sandeel feed going off at Back Beach Thursday morning. I did manage to make a few casts and landed one 25 inch striper on a Jumpin Minnow before they swam out of my reach from the shore. I have moved my Maritime back to Cape Ann and hope to get out and prospect the shoreline, reefs and islands beginning next week. If anyone would like to contribute to this weekly fishing report….please send it out to me via email (with photos if you like).
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