Green Harbor MA Captain’s Log

Bluefin tuna are in the area a little early this year. For the first few weeks of July they were all over Massachusetts Bay and all around Stellwagen bank. So far their the Tuna have been eating mostly sand eels but now we are starting to see Peanut bunker in large numbers too. This past week it seems to have slowed down a little. Let’s hope this is a temporary condition. The best fishing is still to come. Many boats have been having good luck trolling squid daisy chains and Tuna teaser chainsas well as spreader bars early morning but when the small ones are up top people have also been having success with light tackle. If you have a decent spinning rod, load it up with 65lb powerpro braid and have a green striped deadly dick ready to go at all times. I’m headed out to Stellwagen this Thursday morning early to see what I can drag up.

On Tuesday June 26 at 5:30pm we headed over to Browns Bank to do some Striper fishing. I have been having a blast catching schoolies in the 22 to 27inch range there for the past few weeks trolling green shad niner rigs on lead core line down the bank in about 30ft of water. My brother was along for this trip and he’s a big advocate of trolling a tube and worm when targeting Stripers. I figure we troll the bank using his method and if it doesn’t produce we can always hook up the niner rigs later. The birds were working all over the place and for a while we were chasing the birds trying to get the lines right through the action but the bayis full of lobster buoys and after a few snag ups I quickly put a stop to the madness and returned to my 30ft ally along the bank. We trolled along the edge of Browns bank headed into the bay all the way to Bud Lite. One the first pass just as we approached the end of the run (the corner before turning into Plymouth harbor) the water gets deep. There is a nice drop off at the end of the run where the water goes from 25 to 60+ feet. On an incoming tide the fish bunch up the ridge there. This spot has consistently produced decent fish for me but I was soon to find out today would be exceptional. The sun was starting to set as we passed over the ridge when one of the tubes appeared to get caught on the bottom. Appeared being the key word because it was not on the bottom at all, it was attached to a 40lb Striper who was peeling line like a football tuna. This cow took 4 nice runs before we could get his beside the boat. He had a belly full of keeper sized flounder. I guess I’ll be using a tube and worm a little more often now.

Oh yeah we are starting the season of right this year with a 38 inch striper. Now that may not seem like a big deal to some but I consider this to be a very good sign, let me explain why. On any given day fishing you need a certain amount of luck to be successful. Even the most experienced fisherman (which I am not) get skunked. Sometimes all the skill in the world won’t bring the fish to the boat. On this particular day we were not targeting Stripers, we were after cod and we were having some success too. We were in 115 ft of water a few miles off of Plymouth fishing around a structure using a cod fish rig (PENNEL RIG) with bright red teasers tipped with clams. Drifting over and around the structure we (my Dad and I) were bouncing the rigs along when he landed what we thought was a good sized cod. I reeled up and got my setup out of his way while continued reeling in his line. This first thing I noticed was that instead of reeling the line up (which is usually the case when reeling in a cod) he was reeling the line in from way behind the boat. Of course the reason for this is that this was not a cod at all, it was a hungry striped bass. He must have been lurking around the structure on the bottom hanging with the cod. This is the first time I have ever seen a large striped bass take a clam on a cod lure before.

The striped bass measured in at 38 inches and it is the first keeper bass of the year. Two things make it special:
1.) It was a gift form the ocean since we were not fishing for stripers.
2.) My dad caught it on our first fishing trip of the year.

If luck plays any role in fishing then things are looking good already!