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bluefishing

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    Summer Ups and Downs

    Eels, pogies, bluefish, and giant tuna

    By

    Fishing remained good on the Outer Cape this past week, with August rolling in on a quiet note weatherwise. Striped-bass fishing was again solid from Race Point all the way to the Peaked Hill Bar. We saw a good number of small fish under the slot size — in the 25- to 27-inch range. This is frustrating for this summer’s anglers; it’s no fun when you have to tell a customer the fish is an inch short of being a keeper. But it’s a good sign for the future.

    Commercial bass fishermen did not get the extra open day for August as they’d hoped they would because 70 percent of the quota has been filled. They would have gotten the extra day if the remaining quota had been above 30 percent. So, two open days a week for commercial bass fishing will be the schedule until the quota is filled, which will more than likely happen during the month of August.

    Tomasz Sas, a Chicago police officer, shows off his pool-winning striped bass. (Photo by Mike Rathgeber)

    Bluefishing continues to be rather manic: one day is insanely good and the next day not one fish is found. We had a day when they came into the bay along Herring Cove shoal waters in big numbers, and everyone who was there caught a lot of them. The next day they were gone. In general, the bay has never been as much of a dead zone as it has been this season, and I continue to be concerned and curious as to the reasons why.

    A group of humpback whales has been stationed just off Peaked Hill Bar and has not moved more than a quarter mile from that one spot in over a week. These whales seem content to stay put and feed on the abundant sand eels and herring in that area. Add to that the arrival of huge, dense schools of pogies, and they really have no reason to go anywhere else.

    August is the month when giant bluefin tuna show up in Cape Cod Bay, and true to tradition they were seen crashing the surface chasing pogies a few miles off Wood End Light this week. A few were caught, so we hope this is the start of a good late summer to early fall bay run. Giants have also been taken around Peaked Hill and the southwest corner of Stellwagen Bank.

    I am hearing about more than the usual numbers of thresher sharks being caught by fishermen pursuing tuna. As sharks go, these don’t rate high on anyone’s good eats list, but the tail meat from a thresher shark is one of the better tasting fish I’ve ever eaten and many who have tried it would agree.

    Speaking of sharks, a hammerhead shark was spotted off Monomoy last week. What makes this an unusual sighting is that hammerheads generally prefer much warmer water than we typically have, so this is yet another example of how climate change and a warming ocean are pushing these fish farther and farther north. At this rate, it won’t be long before we see mahi and cobia arriving up here, while lobsters are departing. Lobster fishing is already an almost dead industry in Long Island Sound, but that’s a subject for another day.

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    Bluefish Reign, but Hypoxia Threatens South End of Bay

    A major factor is lawn fertilizer raising nitrogen levels

    By

    As the water heats up, the bluefishing just keeps getting better and better. I recorded some extraordinary surface water temperatures last week: 77 degrees in the harbor, and 75 degrees off the cottages at Beach Point. That is downright tropical. Even the normally cooler Race rips were 71 degrees on the ebb tide.

    Striped bass continue to hang around the ocean beaches way down by Head of the Meadow and towards Cahoon Hollow Beach in Wellfleet.

    But locally, it’s all about the bluefish. They are literally everywhere. Charter boats are catching them off the Race Station and at Race Point. There are bluefish from Herring Cove to Wood End light, and also off the cottages at Beach Point and all the way south to the entrance to the Pamet.

    And they are hungry. We caught them well on cut mackerel chunks and Ava green tail diamond jigs on the Cee-Jay. Capt. Russ of the Lisa Z, Capt. Dave of the Ginny G, Capt. Nico of Cape Tip’N, and Capt. Rich of the Beth Ann all reported solid bluefish catches trolling umbrella rigs.

    Keep in mind: bluefish are highly perishable, so bleeding them out and icing them down quickly is key to having a fish that will taste great when cooked the same day.

    We got a disturbing email alert from National Marine Fisheries this week: the south end of the bay has become hypoxic. Apparently, the data indicate that dissolved oxygen levels are decreasing at some locations in the southern portion of Cape Cod Bay — the same region that experienced hypoxic conditions in 2019 and 2020.

    Data collected by the Cape Cod Bay Study Fleet and by the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown indicated oxygen levels near the seabed of 4.0 mg/L. In several locations, the values were less than 4.0 mg/L, which is considered mildly hypoxia. Readings of less than 2.0 mg/L indicate severely hypoxic conditions. The data indicate that some locations have been varying at around 4 mg/L for about a week.

    No severely hypoxic conditions have been detected yet this summer, but the trend of declining dissolved oxygen observed is certainly an area of concern. Bottom-dwelling animals like lobsters will move to avoid hypoxic conditions when they can, but they will die if stuck in traps and exposed to hypoxia for more than a few hours.

    Consequently, fishermen working in or near the area are encouraged to be on the lookout for signs of hypoxia, which includes unusual amounts of lethargic or dead lobsters, crabs, or finfish in the traps. Marine Fisheries recommends that fishermen check their traps frequently, and possibly consider moving gear out of the affected region to prevent trapped lobsters or crabs from being in hypoxic conditions.

    How does this condition happen? One major factor is the amounts of nitrogen- and phosphorus-based lawn fertilizers that Cape home owners use to get that lawn emerald green. All that fertilizer eventually ends up in the bay; excess nitrogen levels in the bay create an algae explosion. Algae consume oxygen — and the next step is a hypoxic condition. Nitrogen fertilizers should simply be banned Cape-wide, not just in a few selected towns.

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    Oblivious Whale Nearly Takes Out My Friend

    Vaughn Cabral’s close encounter with a cetacean

    By

    In last week’s column, I wrote that I thought I had seen it all, only to watch a man with a scuba mask dive off his paddleboard to swim with the seals. That might have been the most bizarre moment ever on the water, I thought. But it was topped this past week in a truly “hold my beer” moment.

     

    I was running the Cee-Jay and bass fishing off of Herring Cove. A few hundred yards further out in the deeper water, my boss and good friend, Vaughn Cabral, was in his little center console boat, as usual, fishing for mackerel, which we would use for bait on our next trip. I was sitting up on the bridge, just staring out on the water in the direction of Vaughn’s boat, when, suddenly, there was a massive eruption — and his boat was lifted into the air, landing on its side.

     

    Vaughn Cabral got up close and personal with a fin whale this week, just like his famous encounter in this photo, taken three years ago, with a white shark. (Photo Mike Rathgeber)

    There were fin whales in the area, feeding on mackerel. When they feed, they lunge in a short burst of high speed to catch the mackerel. Apparently, the whale did not know a boat was drifting on the surface above when it made its lunge. We see this particular whale all the time and recognize it because it has a huge scar on its back from a previous ship strike. This whale clearly has issues with orienting itself to surface objects.

     

    I asked my passengers to hurry up and bring their lines in and we raced over to see if Vaughn was all right. It is amazing the boat did not sink, because once they go sideways and water rushes in, it generally doesn’t stop. But in this case, the boat righted itself.

     

    When I got next to Vaughn, he was soaked from head to toe, a fishing rod lay broken, the fish finder had fallen out of its bracket, and the boat was full of water. We stayed long enough to make sure the boat was keeping water out and left a very shaken man, who doesn’t shake easily, to put his boat back together. This is the same man in the same boat who had a white shark try to bite his transom three years ago.

     

    The heat has finally gotten to the striped bass, and they are not really biting very well. Surface water temperatures have remained balmy, in the upper 70s. Good for swimming, but bad for striped bass fishing.

     

    White-sided dolphins at Race Point. (Photo Mike Rathgeber)

    Bluefish, however, like warm water, and fishing for them has been outstanding. It’s really nice to see these big, bad, toothy critters in abundance again after a few years of their being missing in action. Bluefishing has been hot in a wide swath from Long Point to Race Point and around the backside beaches towards the Ranger Station. They have been on the smallish side — two to four pounds — but in very large schools. Casting swimming plugs and vertical jigging have been the most effective methods of catching them, along with trolling umbrella rigs.

     

    The whales are still around Race Point, as you might have guessed, feeding on mackerel and herring, so keep an eye out for the spouts. We also saw a lot of tuna this past week along the backside beaches and even saw some chasing pogies in the harbor.

     

    The biggest treat were the huge pods of white-sided dolphins we spotted off the Race and in the harbor as well. Just goes to show, you truly never know what you will see when you throw the lines off and head out to sea.

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