Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Fishing the Cape Cod Canal for Big Striped Bass

By Captain Ryan Collins


Fishing the Cape Cod Canal at night can be a wonderful and sometimes utterly spooky undertaking. There is no lack of unusual characters, critters and unusual noises up and down the rip-rap after dark. Nonetheless if you are hoping to dramatically raise your chances of reeling in a tremendous striped bass fishing from shore, then heading to the Cape Cod Canal at nite may well indeed be right up your alley.

The night time angling in the Canal really starts to produce with the entrance of the initial 20 pound plus bass. Frequently by Memorial Day massive fish have settled throughout the Canal-this is when the night time fishing actually starts to flip on. At this point of the year, nighttime excursions are usually hit or miss proposition as large masses of bass progress in the Canal right into Cape Cod Bay. Basically, you might nail bass one trip and then not even generate a take the following night. When the next wave of sizable bass streams in by way of Buzzard's Bay the after dark fishing switches on again.

By July the night time bite will become far more consistent. The bulk of the bass base has settled firmly into their summer time haunts, which usually makes Cape Cod Canal fishing a touch less hit and miss. It's quite feasible to catch large stripers each night of the week, if of course you can focus on the best Canal fishing spots.

The majority of the stripers which are hooked after dark are hooked on bait, jigs and subsurface lures. Traveling down and up the bike path, hunting for breaking bass is clearly out of the equation. Having a firm grasp on the most productive tides and locations is a lot more essential when fishing after dark then when fishing during the day.

The overwhelming majority of large bass hooked at night are taken out of holes, rips and close to bits of structure. Fishing these places will dramatically strengthen your likelihood of tying into a large striper.

Presenting jigs right on the bottom in these spots, or swimming a lure or eel in a rip is a simple technique to attract a big striper. Quite a few Cape Cod Canal sharpies opt to fish artificial lures when the tide is cranking, and then go to live or chunk bait during slack. Many of the largest bass ever taken in the Canal have been taken on a piece of bait fished on the bottom during a night slack tide.

Subject to what the bass decide to do, autumn at the Cape Cod Canal could be either outstanding or discouraging. If a bio mass of bass chooses to swim through the Cape Cod Canal during their migration south, then the fishing at the Canal will be excellent. Yet if the primary body of stripers decides to migrate around the Outer Cape on their southbound trek, then Cape Cod Canal fishermen will be out of luck.

Having said that, even during slow autumns fishing the Canal at night during September and October can result in many size-able stripers. As always, concentrating on hitting the most productive Canal fishing spots during the right tide is the most important element for striped bass success.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment