Just when we start enjoying epic weather and think we have a fall bass run commencing, here comes Mother Nature to slap us in the face with reality.
In the week leading up to the weather that moved in last Thursday, fishing for bass, bluefish, and fluke was pretty good. But since then, we’ve been stuck with quite the protracted pattern, with a low-pressure system sitting just east of the Cape, spinning but not moving and slashing us with stiff northeast winds and heavy rain.
My guess would be that when this weather finally moves away it will leave some cold ocean and bay water temperatures behind. Unfortunately, at this time of year when the water temperature gets a chill it prompts the departure of the striped bass. They’re likely going to begin their migration south and out of here. Bluefish are typically right behind the bass, looking for warmer waters. It won’t surprise me one bit if these fish are all gone when we can finally get offshore again.
The forecast calls for northeast to east winds the entire week, with the possibility of a tropical system affecting us during the weekend ahead. We would need southerly winds to have a chance of our water temperatures warming up again this fall.
Fluke fishing closed on Sept. 23, and tuna is closed until Oct. 1, so if we lose bass and blues there really will not be anything to fish for this week. Such is life on the Outer Cape.
The whales also will be getting ready for their annual migration from their feeding grounds here to the Caribbean where they mate and give birth.
Regular readers of my column know that I have written many times about what a dead zone the bay has become for fishing. It’s a drastic change from years past. Looking for a reason, I am beginning to believe it’s a water quality issue. I noted that the Association to Preserve Cape Cod’s annual “State of the Waters” report, released in January, says that although our drinking water is clean, 90 percent of the Cape’s coastal bays and more than a third of its freshwater ponds have “unacceptable” water quality.
The biggest pollutants are nitrogen and phosphorus, and the APCC reports that the source is mainly “from inadequately treated wastewater from septic systems.” And to make things worse, we know we even have cesspools still in the ground around here. Stormwater runoff and fertilizers are the other two sources of nutrients in our waters.
Together, all these excess nutrients when introduced into the bay help accelerate the growth of invasive weeds and toxic algae that is linked to hypoxia — a lack of oxygen in the water.
The Cape Cod Commission reports that the Cape has over 500 miles of shoreline. It also has 890 freshwater ponds and 53 saltwater bays. The Cape’s beaches, ponds, and inlets are the mainstay for swimming, boating, and fishing and obviously are the primary reason we have a tourism economy that the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce says is worth $1.3 billion.
Yet love for this valuable resource isn’t really showing up in the form of improvements in our waters. The really bad news is that the number of bays and ponds ranked “unacceptable” in this year’s report was very close to last year’s count. Our antipollution plans can’t produce tangible results if they remain little more than plans. And getting results will take a decade, the APCC report says.
Can this be the reason many species of fish have decided to no longer take up residence in our bays and are preferring ocean waters? Sounds plausible to me, but we need someone to study this so we can get beyond conjecture.
