We did not get up to the Merrimack this past week. Remants of the ocean storm left dangerous conditions at the rivers mouth for the better part of the week, but here is the Surfland B&T report.
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Cape Ann Report
This past week started off slow and difficult with silt, seaweed debris and big swells left behind by the weekend storm. However, the past few days have displayed an uptick in activity from Halibut Point on down coast to the Gloucester backshore. Several large stripers have been taken in these areas by local bait chunkers this past week, so maybe we are seeing the beginning of an early fall run. And with the crisp fall like air that came in Thursday, so did a huge school of big bluefish chasing what appeared to be a horde of silversides or immature herring. The early morning blitz began near Salt Island and subsided just off Emerson Point. The blues were nice and big, pushing 12 pounds on the Boga and were easy to coax to a topwater bait. Needles to say, it was a fantastic 2 hours! After the “blues blitz”, we prospected the shoreline for stripers and were rewarded with several very chunky bass. Checkout 2 vids (below) shot Thursday morning .
Seeing all that bait and blues in our Cape Ann waters brings optimism for a solid fall of fish and we certainly deserve a better than average fall to offset the very slow summer season.
Brian O’C and a buddy had their best two days of the season last w/e, bagging several quality stripers each.
