In what has been the windiest September I can recall, I managed to set aside this week to chase false albacore down on Cape Cod. This time period has been kind to us in the past. The fish have been cooperative (as albies go) and there are fewer boats chasing them around during the week. A day or two would be windy enough to force us to alter plans, maybe seeking shelter up in the coves and harbors of Buzzard's Bay or chasing stripers and blues in Boston Harbor or Duxbury Bay. A day or two would be FAC, all the way across the Sound, letting us imagine that we were still in the middle of summer as we ran to the fish market in Menemsha for lunch and left jackets in stuff sacs even after the sun went down. And a couple days would be windy but fishable. The kind of days where you needed the stripping basket, where you might reach for the spinning gear before the fly rod, where you would need a shower before supper to rinse off the salt caked on from spray.
This week has been filled with days where you don't even make the effort to poke out past the jetty or drive down to the shore to gauge the waves and the forecast is calling for more of the same. I made it out Wednesday, in a pesky chop driven up onto the Falmouth shore by the southwest wind. No funny fish revieled themselves to me. I chatted with a couple of other anglers who had been running the same searching circut who reported the same findings. Thursday's weather window was much smaller, as the Cape Wind tower in Nantucket Sound was reportsing gusts to 17 knots out of the southeast by dawn. The northeast corner of Buzzards Bay offered the best combination of lee shore and chance to see hardtails. By 1:00 PM there was enough shelter along Monument Beach and Wings Neck to consider staying out, but the run back to the launch ramp was going to be a slog. Time to head home.
There are still stripers in the Kennebec River and Casco Bay. My last Maine saltwater trip in 2009 was in the third week of October and we found fish. The past couple of weeks the striped bass have been holding in deeper waters upriver. There have also been pods of nice bass cruising along the outer beaches, but getting to them has been tough between all of the swell and wind. The past three weeks have been much slower on the flats in the Kennebec. We haven't had any significant numbers of peanut bunker down around the mouth of the river and the little spike macs are still hanging just offshore. For whatever reason, the bass haven't moved into many of the traditional fall ambush points where they feast on young of the year alwives. They remain very grouped up, but that could change at any time.
Looks like we'll have a brief respite when the winds will drop under 15 knots, and there aren't many days left to chase the albies without a much longer trek to the south, so we'll give it another shot. Bird season is underway in Maine and the snow guns at Sunday River will be fired up any day now.
Capt. Peter Fallon
Just curious if you know if the new state laws in Maine permit river fishing anytime of year now. I know with freshwater fishing you can pretty much go anytime now. Not sure how that relates with brackish water?
Posted by: Bass Fishing | February 14, 2011 at 11:30 AM