A Couple Lessons Learned

Went back to the West End of the canal last night. The fish are still there, but there are more small fish and bluefish now. I did see someone catch one really nice bass, but mostly I saw small fish being caught. I caught one fish on the night, a nice healthy 25-26" fish I would say. I lost one more and had my offering exploded upon on numerous occassions, but with no hookups. There was a boat out in front of me and the other two guys near me and I tried my hardest to cast as close to the boat as possible as to let them know that they were too close. I landed a couple casts within 10 feet I'd say. Not sure they understood the message, but they did not stay too long. The two guys next to me were sporting their $800-$1000 surf casting setups. As a direct descendant of "Mr. Cheapo" i would show them that I could catch fish just as good as them. Well, one of them anyway. The guy immediately to the right of me did not hook up at all while I was there, but the guy on the other jetty probably brought in 10 fish. Wish I was bold enough to ask him what lure/color he was using, but no big deal. This night ended up being one that I will chalk up to learning the ropes. I will be better prepared in the future because of it. I have been doing a lot of reading and feel that I had all my necessary supplies packed in one backpack. Loaded up, but not overdone is what I was shooting for and I am pretty much there. New lessons are:

1. Braid line will mess up your finger when casting hard and often.

2. Close the bail with your hand to make sure that the braid does not spool on loose.

3. Put your light on a lanyard.


1. After fishing on Thursday night when many awesome fish were caught my finger had a small cut on it that I chalked up to nicking on a hook. Don't get me wrong I had heard that casting braid will mess up your finger, but over the years I have not had that happen. In retrospect I have not had this happen because usually I was casting with eels and not trying to cast my plugs the lenghth of a football field out into the middle of the Cape Cod Canal. Anyway, about a half hour in my finger is killing me. I decided to work through the pain and deal with it later.

2. Shortly after repositioning myself on a jetty I notice I have a knot in my spool. I empty out the line to get to it and it is unfixable. I retie the leader and begin fishing again. About a half hour later there is an even bigger knot in the spool and it was obvious that it happened at the very end of a cast because it was deep in the spool. Unfixable again. I had to stop fishing because I no longer had enough line on my rod.

3. While getting the final knot out of my spool I had my mag light flashlight in my mouth so i could see what I was doing. It fell out of my mouth and in to the water. Now it looked like there was a spaceship hovering under the rocks of the jetty in three feet of water. Light coming up between every crack. This made the last few minutes of untangling and cutting the braid very challenging, but eventually I did it.

Solutions:

1. I will wear a bandaid whenever i am going to be casting with braid or tape it up. I am way to cheap to spend $20 on an Aquaskinz casting glove.

2. First I am in need of a new reel that closes as soon as I begin reeling, but in the meantime I think I can avoid the knots by closing the bail myself.

3. Not that I haven't read that I need to keep my light on a lanyard, but now I will definitely do that.

Although last night was not a very successful night in terms of fish caught I did avoid the skunk and manage to catch more fish than one of the $1000 shore fisherman. More importantly i can chalk last night up to a good learning experience that will hopefully allow me to have more success in the future.

Finally!!

Mike Earley was instrumental in getting us out on Mother's Day to fish. Somehow he persuaded Suzanne to take the other wives out to an extended lunch/dessert on Saturday. This gave us 4 hours of fishing on Mother's Day morning.

It was windy and a bit cold, but doable. We decided to head to the West End of the Cape Cod Canal and then work our way back. On the way to the Canal we came up on a huge flock of birds that were diving. It was clear by some of the rises that there were fish breaking under the birds. I feel pretty confident that I did not get too close to spook the school, but as soon as i got us within casting distance the birds took off and so did the fish. We slowly went over where the action had been occurring and I noticed that there were some interesting marks on the fishfinder. I have not yet taken the time to completely figure out how it works. I was pretty sure that this had to be fish. Mike and I took some casts and Mike hooked up to the first fish of the season, a small 20 incher. We turned around and repeated the drift. As soon as I told Mike we were over the fish he hooked up again. I was very excited to be reading the fishfinder accurately. We repeated the drift a few more times and I finally got a hit, but it felt like areally small fish and he never really latched on. Mike got a couple more hits too, but we were unable to boat any more fish.

We went up to the West End of the Canal and did see some bird action, but there were no fish under them. On the way back home we swung into the mouth of Red Brook Harbor and made a few casts into the rocks at Wing's Neck. After a while we saw a few striped bass working on some bait in tight to shore. About ten feet away from where we could reach with a cast. Could not tell what the bait was. Looked too small to be herring. Bigger than peanut bunker and smaller than adult menhaden.

I am going to be trying to take advantage of any free time I can muster in the next month as the fishing is really going to start heating up. A couple sick days may be in order as well.