BOSTON HARBOR & SOUTH SHORE-Stripers 7/17/2007
Silversides are the predominate bait-fish that stripers can be found feeding on in the bays and coves of Boston and the South Shore. Soon the juvenile silversides (spearing) will be staging in the upper-reaches of the harbor bays adding to our excellent top-water fishing. Through most of this past week, surface presentations both on the long rod and light-tackle has produced best. Gartside’s gurglers in chartreuse or white fished with at staccato retrieve---a couple of fast strips with a protracted pause in between strips—triggered the strike-response in the small schools of stripers swirling on the surface or popping individually on the baitfish. Because of the size, the gurglers out-fished the Texas-rigged soft-plastic, light-tackle surface presentations—slug-gos and Bassin’ Assassin’. However, light-tackle presentations accounted for more of the keeper-bass.
Tuesday brought an all-morning, pea-soup fog for Larry Dupris and son from Vermont. Knowledge of where the bass were feeding in Boston and effective use of Garmin’s plotting GPS combine with speed and navigation-rules for the existing conditions made for a successful morning fish. Numbers of school bass were cruising on the calm surface water. Surface presentations were the ticket for these fish between 20 and 27 inches. Two keeper bass were hooked and lost at the boat—the largest broken off at the hook-set from the rocks off Cohasset`s Minot`s Ledge.
Wednesday’s company outing set-up by Steve Purvis (Corona Films, Townsend, MA) was the most productive trip for keeper bass for the week. The group landed two keepers to 33”. As luck would have it, “Steverino”, although the youngest of his peers with the best reflexes, just couldn`t strike fast enough to hook the two monsters that smashed his Bassin’ Assassin’ at boat-side. As usual the weather people blew the 5 to 10 SW wind forecast for long-time fly fisher Myron Becker (Chef Myron’s foods) and his friend Doc Myron and son on Thursday. The wind blew a steady 15 with gusts to 20 making casting difficult for Chef Myron. His hand-tied gurgler creation fished best producing good numbers of school bass to 26 inches, but no keepers that day. Saturday’s trip with Roger Thuot brought the same results—school bass but no keepers.
The forecaster’s got it right for yesterday morning’s (Monday) fish and the realization of a dream come true for Nick Behun of Pittsburg, PA. Nick’s goal was to finally catch a keeper bass. We had relatively slow action on the last hour of the ebb. The flood brought squadrons of fresh fish, covered with sea-lice, moving in against the current of this incoming tide. Although the fly fisher of this split-charter, Dino Romanow, raised, hooked and landed the most bass using his Orvis T-3, 8 wgt. Fly rod fishing 2/0 chartreuse gurglers, Nick realized his dream by hooking two keeper bass of 29 and 30 inches on light-tackle. 20+ bass were brought to boat-side and released before the sun broke through the clouds in late morning.
Capt. Mike Bartlett
B-Fast Charters
www.bfastcharters.com
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