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fishing

    ON THE BEACH

    The Language of Fishing

    Why fishermen’s back and forth is jovial even when they’re getting skunked

    By

    I wait all winter for the precious June afternoons when the wind and sun are at my back, and the tide is low and incoming. These are perfect conditions for sight fishing, when you can see hungry schools of stripers hunting baitfish in the deep troughs that resemble mountain streams forming between the first row of sandbars and the beach.

    But this was a tough spring for beach fishing. In Wellfleet, the early schools of menhaden skipped Cape Cod Bay entirely, passing east of Cape Cod on their northward migrations. The bay is full of large stripers, chasing small baitfish south of the Billingsgate Shoals and the plentiful mackerel off Provincetown. So, fishing from boats has been good, but shore fishing has been spotty at best, devoid of the adrenaline-fomenting surface action of large fish assaulting menhaden and herring within easy casting distance.

    “Waiting for a bite” says this postcard dated 1910.

    Despite my doubts about our chances, I accepted my friend Zyg Plater’s challenge of finding some early June stripers for his two flyfishing pals who were on their way for a visit. After all, I reasoned, conditions for sight fishing would be perfect by the time his friends arrived, and what could be more fun for some experienced stream fishermen than casting for large stripers in the fast-moving water at the base of the back shore’s magnificent towering dunes?

    Over the next three days, I logged more than seven miles walking the beaches at Longnook, Ballston, and Newcomb Hollow. The water, typically teeming with clouds of small baitfish — silversides, peanut bunker, and sand eels — seemed utterly devoid of life. Missing, too, were the terns and small gulls that nearly always accompany actively feeding stripers. The beach was beautiful and inviting, the stuff of winter dreams. The only thing missing was the fish.

    Between visits to the back shore, I made similar trips to my favorite bay and harbor fishing spots on Mayo Beach, the Herring River, and Lieutenant Island. I called my friends and even stopped at Goose Hummock in Orleans to inquire if they knew where the fish were. “You gotta have a boat,” was all I heard from everyone.

    Anxious to keep expectations low, I sent Zyg a quick text the night before our fishing expedition saying that I’d been unable to locate any fish and adding that the forecast for the following day was rain and southeast wind: the very worst conditions for Outer Cape beach fishing.

    “Having lots of excitement here” is the claim on a 1940s postcard.

    No matter. Zyg and his pals pulled into my driveway midmorning under a deck of sullen gray clouds. The weather might have been gloomy, but the group’s spirits were not. We talked, as fishermen do. And within minutes, I knew, besides where they all live, how serious they are about our communal sport, where they like to fish, and whether they prefer dry or wet fly casting.

    Along with Zyg and his mates was Jay, introduced as a nephew interested in learning how to fish. He appeared to be a quiet, good-natured young man, but as our conversation continued, I saw a confused look in his eyes. It was clear he was wondering why we were so jovial, considering how glum our fishing prospects appeared to be.

    It struck me in that moment that fishermen have their own peculiar language. Besides shorthand ways of describing their levels of experience and preferences, time on the water gives fishermen their own built-in insulation against agita over poor fishing conditions.

    I recall going trout fishing during my graduate school years with a psychology professor who turned to me on a cold fishless morning and said, “You know, clinically speaking, fishing passion is not based so much on catching fish but on getting skunked.” Seeing the look of shock on my face, he continued. “Think about it. If we caught fish every time we went out, do you think we’d appreciate our success as much as we do when we get lucky?”

    Every serious fisherman, especially fly fishermen, whose success is quite dependent on weather, has experienced outings ruined by storms and other unexpected conditions. As we drove in the drizzle from Lieutenant Island to the Herring River, one of my new pals described a long, expensive trout fishing trip to the South Island of New Zealand that had been utterly ruined by high winds. I related a similar experience of being dropped off at a remote fly-in-only stream high in the Cascade Mountains when an unseasonable storm turned the river into a muddy, raging body of unfishable water. That storm lasted for days.

    Thoreau knew that fishing was about being on the pond, not about catching fish. Here, Thoreau’s Cove at Walden Pond circa 1900. (Photo courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection)

    Not only does experience tamp expectations, it fills our memory banks with every type of fishing tale imaginable, the times we were successful as well as those that left us bitterly disappointed. Not that anyone wishes for the latter, but just as caught fish can grow a bit larger with every story’s telling, even our worst moments can become funnier and more poignant with every rendition.

    As it turned out, although we were not able to give Jay his first taste of fly fishing, he and Zyg’s visiting friends did get to see many of Wellfleet’s beaches and marshes. I took my tour group to places I like to fish, each one also meaningful to me for its historical and modern-day relevance. So, they visited the new construction at the Herring River dike and Duck Harbor, currently under refurbishment aided by natural processes. From Indian Neck we looked out at Great Island and Jeremy Point, now uninhabited but formerly an outpost for Wellfleet fishermen.

    He didn’t get to feel the actual pull of a fish, but I think Jay was able to learn a bit of the language of fishing and appreciate that catching fish is not always a fisherman’s prime objective.

    There is, of course, a fishing story to support this idea. It is that Henry David Thoreau, an avid fisherman, said this: “Many men fish all of their lives without ever realizing that it is not the fish they are after.”

    He didn’t say those words, according to those who preserve Thoreau’s legacy at the Walden Woods Project in Lincoln. He did write something of the sort, though, in a journal entry on Jan. 26, 1853 in which he complained about people he saw ice fishing at Walden Pond: “I am disappointed and surprised to find that they lay so much stress on the fish which they catch or fail to catch, and on nothing else, as if there were nothing else to be caught.”

    Thoreau himself had gotten past that, he wrote. “Now I go a-fishing and a-hunting every day, but omit the fish and the game, which are the least important part. I have learned to do without them.”

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    Another Weekend, Another Storm

    Flounder persist, stripers arrive, and there are new rules for recreational bluefin tuna fishing

    By

    Another weekend storm has hampered our efforts to get out there and go fishing. This time, south to southwest winds gusting to 35 m.p.h. and rain stifled any idea of venturing offshore.

    Still, I have some good news about what’s in the bay right now.

    Striped bass fishing is beginning to improve dramatically as more fish filter in from the south. Billingsgate Shoals seems to be the early season hot spot, which is what we have come to expect. Capt. Nico Pace of Cape Tip’n reported limit catches of slot-size fish and great top-water action on bass at the north end of the shoals all week.

    A flounder among sea pens, seen in an exploration of Atlantic canyons and seamounts on a U.S.-Canada “Deep Connections” expedition. (Photo courtesy NOAA)

    Flounder fishing remains steady down in the south end of the bay off Sesuit Harbor, and mackerel are just about everywhere. There are reports of scattered bluefish catches along the Cape’s south shore and in Buzzards Bay. We are still waiting for the squid run to begin in our harbor. All we need now is for the weather to cooperate and we’ll have the makings of a late but solid start to spring fishing.

    NOAA has just updated the recreational bluefin tuna regulations, and a lot of private boat owners and charter boat captains are not happy. What’s hard to understand is that the change seems to shift the pressure from medium and large fish onto smaller fish.

    Private boats with a Highly Migratory Species permit can take only one fish per day or trip — that number was the same last year, but what’s changed is the size. Last year, that fisherman could harvest a schoolie (27 to 47 inches) or a medium to large tuna (up to 73 inches). Now it can only be a schoolie; harvesting the medium or larger fish is not allowed.

    Charter boats with a HMS permit that used to be able to take one fish of any size from schoolie to large, so 27 to 73 inches, can now take two schoolie fish (27 to 47 inches).

    Bluefin tuna have long lifespans — 20 to 25 years. They reach three feet in size and sexual maturity at around the five-year mark. Trading a regulation that allowed for the harvesting of one sexually mature fish for two sexually mature fish makes zero sense to me. These are the fish that represent the health of future generations.

    The official explanation from NOAA suggests that the new rule will give more people the chance to catch a fish. The adjusted limits, the agency says, are “intended to provide a reasonable opportunity to harvest the available angling category quota and subquotas without exceeding them, while maintaining equitable fishing opportunities.”

    Maybe these rules favor the commercial industry, but it’s hard to tell as those rules change so often throughout the season.

    The adjusted limits take effect on June 3 and extend through Dec. 31, although they can be modified. That is, there could be further adjustments to the retention limits, or they could decide to close the fishery entirely. We’ll have to see how it goes.

    More to keep in mind for those gearing up for tuna fishing: These new regulations are for the entire East Coast; targeted bluefin fishing is not allowed at all in the Gulf of Mexico. Besides needing that HMS license, fishermen should keep in mind that every bluefin tuna harvested must be reported using the HMS catch reporting mobile app, which can be downloaded from the NOAA site or by calling 888-872-8862 within 24 hours of the catch.

    ON THE BEACH

    The Enduring Teachings of a Childhood Pond

    Nature provides places to heal, but now it asks for our protection

    By

    We called it Spectacle Pond, but maybe that’s just a name we neighborhood kids made up. All I can find now on maps of Lexington is a tiny, roundish pond smack in the middle of a slightly oversize lot in a residential development in an area once known as Blueberry Hill.

    The tiny pond, as I remember it, had steep banks on one side and a marsh on the other. Surrounded by trees and thick bushes, it was hard to get to. Despite its suburban surroundings, its inaccessibility allowed it to remain wild, except in the winter, when the neighborhood kids would swarm the place for pickup hockey games and pirouette practice.

    All the kids claimed the pond was bottomless, and nobody ever said there were fish in it, but I knew better. The first time I skated there I could see bluegill sunfish in the shallows, under the clear ice, scurrying away from my shadow. I spent the rest of that 10th winter of my life waiting for the ice to melt.

    We had moved to Lexington from Argentina, where I had spent my first eight years. There were five of us: my parents, my two sisters, and me. I was the middle child, assigned either by personality or birth order the role of being the family mediator. It was tough, considering that my older sister was smarter, taller, and meaner than me, and that my parents were constantly fighting.

    We were loved and well provided for, but the constant, loud yet secretive battles waged by my parents behind their closed bedroom door were agonizing. I look back in wonderment not so much at my survival but theirs. My parents, a straight woman and a gay man, were able to find a shared path and remained married for almost 60 years.

    Tom Chimento in Wellfleet’s Herring River basin. Every fisherman has his oasis. (Photo by Jim Gilbert)

    In those difficult preteen years, Spectacle Pond became a home away from home. I cleared a path through the brush to avoid the spongy, smelly marsh. I found a little dry spit jutting into the deep end of the pond where the catfish lived and where I could cast into the shallows for the bluegills. I occasionally took a fish or two home to eat but stopped when I realized I was catching the same fish over and over again and was at risk of losing them all. I began thinking of them as my friends and even named the bigger fish.

    The spit became my living room. The single tree that remained there was a twisted red cedar that hung over the water, its S-shaped trunk providing a comfortable seat that allowed me to ruminate while watching for my bobber to twitch.

    When the fishing was slow, I would wander the pond’s edge. I found frogs and toads along the muddy shore and newts under rotting branches. One afternoon, while stirring the mud looking for tadpoles, I discovered some small mysterious organisms. I gathered the tiny white creatures in my worm bucket to show my science teacher, who told me I had discovered a bed of freshwater clams.

    I found myself thinking about that pond recently while watching the evening news and reeling from the coverage of brutal wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the threat of war in the South China Sea, the latest random shooting, and, of course, the seemingly never-ending, mean-hearted buffoonery of a former president. I was trying to remember any other time in my long, mostly happy life when I felt so exposed and defenseless. Memories came to mind of poling my flats boat over the shallow, gin-clear waters of Florida Bay, of fishing in a magical pool high in the Cascade Mountains, and of casting a baited worm and plastic bobber on a bright windless afternoon from a muddy, brush-choked bank and feeling like I might be the first person ever to catch a fish in Spectacle Pond.

    I realized I have survived a succession of difficult times by finding in each case my own emotional oasis, a place to ride out the storm. Each of my refuges has involved water and fish, nature and solitude. If fishing is my religion, it is because I once found a tiny, muddy, perhaps nameless pond as my first church and pastor.

    But one sunny early spring morning in 1962, on the cusp of my 14th birthday, I visited the pond to see if the ice had cleared. As I circled the shore I noticed huge clumps of jelly-like growth just below the surface. The pond was silent and eerily still. No bluegills patrolled the shallows. No turtles or frogs stirred the surface. Looking closely at the base of the blooms I saw catfish, algae growing through their gills, gently swaying in the now fatally polluted water.

    The pond’s demise was also its last lesson to me: never take for granted the beauty and freedom with which we have been blessed. But it also asks something of me now.

    As I watch the news and witness the human-wrought destruction besieging the world, I know having an oasis is not enough to sustain us through the choking hatred, greed, and ignorance that fuels it. We will always find places to heal, but the Spectacle Ponds of the world demand that we use the power freedom gives us to safeguard their very existence.

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    Northeast Winds Bring a Chill to Fishing

    Antiquated septic systems and cesspools affect the bay, not just ponds

    By

    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.

    This seagull has been hanging around the CeeJay for weeks. It has a hook embedded in its chin, and the crew have been feeding it and trying to get close enough to it to throw a towel over it and get the hook out. (Photo by Mike Rathgeber)

    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.

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    A Fall Bass Run

    There’s Wicked Tuna and then there’s real-life tuna fishing

    By

    A fall bass run has evaded us for about six years, but this week there was clear evidence that one is underway. As everybody out here knows, the weather has been phenomenal, with summer-like temperatures and low winds making it feel like August and keeping our water temperatures in the mid-60-degree range. It seems to me this has been the trend for the last few years: summer starting later but ending later, too.

    There are good numbers of bass all along the oceanside beaches from the Race to Head of the Meadow. As we catch them, we’re finding that more and more of these fish are over the slot size. Their growth surely reflects a summer spent gorging themselves on the abundant quantities of food we have in our waters.

    We’re finding bluefish also mixed in, but not many. They are thick, however, in the south end of the bay by Barnstable. The school down there has a lot of big fish in it as well. Fluke fishing remains good but still mostly shorts. The biggest one we saw this week was 16½ inches — that’s still a full inch short of the minimum.

    Commercial tuna season ended on the 12th of this month because the quota was filled. You may be wondering why that quota is getting filled so fast. One answer is this: there are quadruple the number of boats out there fishing for them than there used to be, thanks in part to the show Wicked Tuna, which makes it look like you just go out, hook up immediately, come ashore, and get $20 a pound for your fish. Easy.

    Capt. Nico Pace of Cape Tip’n and his friend Anthony Acito of Quincy coming home with a 65-inch bluefin tuna. (Photo by Mike Rathgeber)

    This is the furthest thing from the truth, though there were some big recreational-size tuna caught last week. Recreational size is 27 to 73 inches long. Capt. Nico of the Cape Tip’N caught two fish that were in the mid-60 inches last week.

    The season will reopen Oct. 1 and will remain open until that quota is filled. My guess is the number of boats fishing for them will decrease exponentially as we get deeper into fall and the winds come around from the north, bringing colder air temperatures our way.

    We still have humpback whales visiting our harbor. One was spotted in Flyer’s mooring field last week.

    The state Div. of Marine Fisheries fall trawl survey was set to get underway on Sunday, Sept. 15. The survey was going to begin on Sept. 3 but was delayed because of routine maintenance on NOAA’s research vessel, the 65-foot western-rigged steel-stern trawler R/V Gloria Michelle. The survey will work its way through the state’s coastal waters starting in Massachusetts Bay, Cape Ann, and Ipswich Bay between Sept. 15 and 18; then, beginning on or about Sept. 18, survey operations will shift to Cape Cod Bay. Around Sept. 21 it’s expected to move to areas east of Cape Cod, south of the Cape and Islands, Vineyard Sound, and Buzzards Bay. Marine Fisheries asks commercial boats to stay out of certain areas as they move through. This trawl survey has been done in May and September since 1978 and is one way of monitoring the overall health of various marine species.

    ON THE BEACH

    Why in Autumn an Explorer Returns to His Familiar Haunts

    It’s not always the fishing an angler remembers most

    By

    A good friend of mine is convinced that humankind is composed of three distinct personalities: farmers, explorers, and seekers.

    According to her theory, exploration is part of each one’s purpose, but it’s different for each type. A seeker is always exploring, but upon reaching a distant horizon is compelled to set out for the next one. An explorer is equally motivated to seek but wants just as strongly to linger and learn everything there is to know about a new discovery. Farmers have little or no desire to seek but are instead content to explore and understand every nook and cranny of their home surroundings.

    Her theory conflicts with my favorite fishing guide’s imperative: “Never leave fish to find fish.” It’s a rule that’s tested at this time of year, as ocean gamefish gather for their annual pilgrimages south.

    Sunset at the Gut in Wellfleet is an indelible sight for the writer. (Photo by Jim Gilbert)

    As in the spring, it is almost impossible to predict where and when the fish will make their appearances. Sometimes they’ll stick close to the shore and sometimes they’ll keep to the deeps, as they did last fall. Sometimes they’ll gather in Cape Cod Bay, making their way south through the Cape Cod Canal. Other times they’ll populate the ocean beaches, offering the best surf fishing of the year. Or I’ll find the best fishing is in the tidal creeks, bays, and harbors.

    This unpredictability can drive fishermen crazy. Some of my friends fly endlessly from one end of the Cape to the other, visiting numerous beaches day and night, pursuing every report or rumor of fish, while others, and I’m among them, prefer to stalk my usual haunts. Are the runabouts seekers? Am I a farmer? Which kind of fisherman is more likely to find success?

    Fisherman and writer David Coggins takes up these questions in The Believer (Scribner, April 2024), a book about flyfishing. Firmly ensconced in middle age, Coggins decides to take an entire year off to visit all the fishing spots he’s dreamed of. He takes us to windswept Patagonia, home to giant sea run brown trout, and to Norway, home of the largest Atlantic salmon in the world. The reader also visits the Spanish Pyrenees, whose tiny trout are perhaps the hardest fish to catch on a fly. He fishes hard with mixed results and writes in a way that reveals the compulsion, the emotion, and the nuanced art of flyfishing. He is also successful at capturing the soul of the places he visits and the people who, equally obsessed, offer him the benefit of their experience and knowledge.

    In The Believer, David Coggins takes up the subject of what someone chasing fish is really looking for. (Photo courtesy Simon & Schuster)

    The places Coggins visits on his romantic fishing odyssey are a feast for the imagination. But he is an honest reporter as well as a compelling writer. He fishes in beautiful places and meets fascinating characters on his journey, but to me the most important takeaway from the book is this: success isn’t determined by where someone fishes but by how quickly a fisherman can adapt to new challenges — like the nearly imperceptible take on a Scandinavian salmon river and lightning-fast hits on a Spanish trout stream. In the end, he finds himself looking forward to returning to his favorite haunts in upstate New York.

    I’ve made a dozen trips to the South Island of New Zealand, which might mark me as a seeker. But the fact that I return each time to fish the same Kiwi rivers clearly means I’m an explorer.

    Whether chasing fish is more productive than sticking to time-tested spots is a tossup in my mind, and it may be trivial in the scheme of things. Coggins ends his book fishing on a drab late fall day on one of his favorite New York streams. He catches a small trout, likely the last of the season, and finds himself filled with unexpected joy.

    What is important, I think he’s telling us, is that fall comes before winter and the long months we spend remembering how well we fared in the final fish run of the season. Looking back over all my autumns past, it’s not the fishing I remember the most. The memories I treasure are not the fish I caught but the glowing sunsets over the Great Island Gut, and the crisp, northerly breezes pushing the blues and stripers southward, and the last hordes of frenetic terns, whose voices I won’t hear again until spring.

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    Torn Between Two Currents

    Colder water, fewer bluefish, and mola molas moving in

    By

    Fishing took a bit of a nosedive this past week. Striped bass really thinned out between Race Point and Peaked Hill Bar, and although some moved down toward Head of the Meadow and Coast Guard Beach it wasn’t a big school of fish. Bluefish are still mostly missing in action. They showed up big all the way down in the bay by Barnstable and on the south end of Billingsgate Shoals but that was only for one day and then they did their disappearing act again.

    Taylor Wiafe, from South Windsor, Conn., with his first keeper bass ever. (Photo by Mike Rathgeber)

    We had tuna in the bay for a few days, but that seems to have quieted down again. Pogies are everywhere on our side of the bay, though, and that usually means tuna and bluefish will follow.
    We are having weird fluctuations in water temperatures this summer. Normally, a protracted wind out of the north or northeast will usher in colder waters for a day or two until we get back to our usual south and southwest winds. But this summer we are seeing some colder water temperatures without the hard north winds and even some cooler temperatures on days with south winds. The backside ocean temperatures have stayed between the mid 50s and low 60s for over a week; some days, we’re seeing pockets of water in the high 40s. The bay in our neck of the woods has not seen the 70-degree mark in a few weeks and is stuck in the low to mid 60s. If you’ve tried to take a swim lately you know what I’m talking about.

    Cape Cod sits between two major currents, one being the Gulf Stream and the other the Labrador, and if the Gulf Stream wiggles a little to the east, which it will do at times, it allows the Labrador current to usher in some of its colder water.

    Mola molas have suddenly shown up, and I’m seeing more storm petrels and shearwaters close to the shoreline lately, too, which indicates something has shifted as late summer opens the way to fall.

    Those humpback whales are still very much camped out feeding away just off Peaked Hill Bar.  One of them has broken away from the pod and has been seen very close to the beach by the Race Point Ranger Station open-mouth feeding for a good part of the day. It has been there for a few days and would be an easy observation even without binoculars if you are on that beach.

    The fin whales that come in to the Race Point area every summer have been notably absent so far, but there is a single minke whale I see on every fishing trip around the Race rips. It has been there most of the summer. I’ve also seen more white-sided dolphins in our area than I typically see in a season.

    The theme here is this: ocean patterns can and do change constantly, sometimes for reasons we know and other times for reasons we really don’t. But in a way, that’s the beauty of it all. No matter how many years — or decades — you spend on the ocean, you still never know for sure what you are going to see when you leave land and head out offshore.

    ON THE BEACH

    The Secret of Tasty Blues

    The art of the quick kill and bleeding brings out the best in bluefish and bonito

    By

    Everybody who owns a rod and reel enjoys catching bluefish. They are aggressive, hard-fighting, love to come close to shore, and will eagerly hit just about any lure cast their way. But for all the fun in catching blues, not everyone wants to eat this seasonally abundant species.

    “They’re just too fishy,” a friend told me last summer when I offered her a fresh bluefish filet. “They’re just too gray and mushy,” my cousin, an avowed seafood junkie, told me recently. “I love them smoked and in fish dips,” she said, “but not on my dinner plate.”

    If blues have gotten a bad rap over the years, it’s not their fault. In fact, neither the fish nor the cook should be blamed for the shortcomings of a species that deserves to be pursued and admired as much by chefs and diners as it is by anglers. Instead, if your bluefish tastes fishy, blame the fisherman.

    Bluefish aren’t the only unfairly snubbed local species. Mackerel, for instance, a species that once formed the backbone of Cape Cod’s economy, are rarely served these days, despite the fact that they are as tasty as trout when just caught and pan-fried in butter and lemon. Times change, and so do the perceptions of deliciousness, I guess. Tuna used to fill Cape Cod Bay each summer, but nobody fished for them.

    Bonito on the cutting board ready to be fileted for the kitchen and smoker.

    And then there are bonito, which until half a dozen years ago were rarely found in any numbers off northern Cape Cod beaches. As a kid, I learned they were never caught north of Vineyard Sound and Buzzards Bay. Thanks to warming water and the northward trajectory of our traditional cold-water species, the bonito seem to be one more unasked-for gift of climate change.

    I went out on my fishing pal Ted Kurland’s boat last week, looking for bluefish without success. It was the third time in the last 10 days we had left Pamet Harbor looking for some acrobatic, arm-busting action and finding it, but not with bluefish. Every blues hangout we visited in Cape Cod Bay was chock-a-block with three- to four-pound bonito.

    Bonito are in the same family as mackerel and tuna, larger than the former and smaller than the latter. Like bluefish, they are hard-fighting and worth it: they make a tasty meal in the oven or frying pan and are a spectacular addition to any smoker. It’s not too late in the season for bluefish to return to their usual haunts and in their typical numbers. But if they don’t, I can’t think of a finer fish to enjoy catching and eating the rest of this summer than bonito.

    As with bluefish, much of the rich flavor of bonito is thanks to its oiliness. The bad news is that those same oils have an off taste when the fish is exposed too long to the heat of a summer’s day.

    Recreational anglers are well advised to emulate commercial fishermen who understand that all fish taste better when handled properly. And with bonito, as with bluefish, that means not only icing them right out of the water, but also bleeding them first. Because the oils are carried in the fish’s bloodstream as well as its skin and flesh, simply putting oily fish into the cooler is not enough. To maximize their potential at the dinner table, oily fish must be bled as soon as they’re caught.

    Bleeding a fish is a lot easier and less messy than it sounds and requires mainly a willingness to pause for a minute or two in the fishing action. Taking a few minutes to do this when fish are hitting on every cast requires discipline, but I consider it an act of respect for my sport-and-meal-worthy quarry. And given today’s three-bluefish daily limit, taking a short break rarely results in missing out on the fun — when fish are around, you’ll likely end up releasing some anyway.

    On a boat, have a cord ready with a slip knot at one end and the other tied securely to the rail or cleat. As soon as the hook is removed, cinch the cord around the fish’s tail and hang it over the gunnel. Use a sharp knife to cut the fish’s throat completely through both gills, close to the body. As soon as the gills are slit, drop the fish into the water. The fish will die almost instantly and bleed out in minutes, ready for the cooler with an ice-and-seawater slurry deep enough to cover the fish. Fish will lose less moisture in salt water, whose density also results in a colder bath than fresh water.

    Bleeding out a fish is not difficult, but it can be messy. With the fish securely tied to the rail, make a quick downward cut from one side of the throat to the other through the gills and let the seawater flush the fish. (Photos by Necee Regis)

    On the beach, time is of the essence when the bluefish are moving rapidly. Always carry a sharp knife and a long cord in your pack. Make the gill cut, then tail-tie the fish, dangling it in the wash to bleed out while holding the other end of the cord. If you’re not leaving the beach or have no cooler full of icy seawater, dig a deep hole above the tide line and cover the fish in it. Tie the tag end of the cord to a stick of driftwood (or mark the hole with a vertical stick) so you’ll always know where the fish is buried. If the tide is falling, you may have to dig a series of holes to keep the fish as close to the cold water as possible.

    The fresh-fish-loving Japanese have raised the proper handling of line-caught fish to an art form. Called ikejime, it requires proper bleeding and icing after the fish has been dispatched as quickly as possible with a thin spike driven into its brain. While a quick kill is humane, the tradition was actually developed to make the fish taste better: reducing stress and trauma significantly lowers levels of cortisol, adrenaline, and lactic acid in the fish, all of which can degrade the taste of the flesh.

    The best sushi and sashimi chefs in the world, along with a growing list of restaurants, are mentioning ikejime on their menus. But this is not a method reserved for those with Michelin stars: What works for them will work in our own kitchens. It will also turn more people on to the deliciousness of the blues.

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    A Windless Week Makes for Good Fishing

    What’s to worry about? Depredation and invasive species.

    By

    It’s been another good week for catching striped bass and some bluefish. Provincetown charter and party boats all reported excellent catches, and we’re very grateful we’ve had a windless week for fishing. We’ve had just enough northerly winds to stop the water temperatures from climbing to unhealthy levels for the type of fish that reside here. Currently it’s in the mid-60s almost everywhere, and that’s a good number for July.

    The bass remain camped mostly around the Peaked Hill Bar but have occasionally crept up to the Race Point Ranger Station. Once again, trollers dominated the big catches, but boats drifting baits, vertical jigging, and casting plugs did well, too.

    Tuna fishing seems to be heating up on the southwest corner of Stellwagen Bank and off Peaked Hill Bar in the deep water. I hear the market for these giants is really bad at the moment, however.

    The northern snakehead is an invasive species that is threatening native fish populations in the Chesepeake Bay area — which is where our striped bass migrate from. (Photos by Ryan Haggerty/USFWS)

    If you fish along the Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Maine and have had a predator grab a fish on the end of the line while you’re fighting it, a research team from UMass Amherst is conducting a survey on this very thing. It’s called depredation when a predator partially or wholly consumes a fisherman’s catch before it can be landed. Their survey is gathering information about depredation; it can be found here: https://bit.ly/3VipGtl. Typically, depredation involves a seal or a shark grabbing your catch. We have had plenty of it on the CeeJay.

    Snakeheads are aggressive predators with sharp teeth.

    As you may know, most of our striped bass migrate here from the Chesapeake Bay area as well as the Hudson River. Here’s something that may be having a significant effect on the number of bass we see up here: there has been an invasive fish problem in the Chesapeake Bay. The invaders, introduced species that can grow to over 100 pounds, are consuming young bass.

    The good news is there is a project to eliminate these invasive fish. Between March and June more than 18,000 pounds of them were removed from Maryland waters around the Chesapeake. The project, undertaken by the Maryland Dept. of Natural Resources, resulted in the removal of 2,106 northern snakeheads (a native of Asia that has unfortunately become firmly established in some 60 miles of the Potomac River) as well as 746 flathead catfish and 36 blue catfish — these introduced species are considered freshwater fish, but they can survive a level of salinity that allows them to devour prey in tidal estuaries.

    The fish were all donated to food banks, so it was a win-win for the community. The removal of invasive species such as snakeheads and catfish helps reduce in-water competition for food and habitat and predation pressure on native anadromous fish like striped bass. It should promote a healthier and more sustainable Chesapeake environment and have a positive effect on all fisheries from Maryland all the way up to Maine.

    That said, this year’s commercial striped bass season has not been great. Only 45 percent of the quota has been filled so far, and if the quota is not reached, the assumption is that the overall population is down. That could mean stricter rules for both commercial and recreational fisheries in the 2025 season.

    MONUMENTS

    Inside the Quest for a Provincetown Fishermen’s Memorial

    After nearly 50 years, a new committee hopes that a sculpture’s time has come

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — It has been nearly 50 years since the select board approved the idea of a memorial statue dedicated to local fishermen lost at sea. It’s a monument that remains unbuilt.

    A scale model of Romolo Del Deo’s current proposed design for the bronze Provincetown fishermen’s memorial. (Photo by Tatiana Del Deo)

    Several committees have tried, unsuccessfully, to execute the project, which was first conceived after seven fishermen died when the Patricia Marie sank in 1976. At least four separate fundraising campaigns have been initiated to pay for the memorial’s design and construction, which is expected to cost half a million dollars. The most successful one so far, by a committee operating in the early 2010s, raised an estimated $26,000, according to records obtained by the Independent.

    The quest to build a Provincetown fishermen’s memorial has amassed its own knotted history, one that has unfolded alongside the evolving history of the town. Now, Lisa King — who was a teenager when her father, Billy King, died captaining the Patricia Marie — is leading a new fishermen’s memorial committee that hopes to finally get the job done.

    “This town is in transition,” King said, toward becoming mainly a vacation place. “We need to honor the past, to acknowledge the fishing history of this town.”

    That vision is energizing a renewed funding appeal from a committee King founded in May 2023. The group hopes to raise $500,000 to cover the cost of a design by local sculptor Romolo Del Deo, son of Provincetown painter Salvatore Del Deo. While a location has yet to be officially approved, King said she hopes the memorial will be placed in Lopes Square.

    The plan for Del Deo’s 16-foot-high, 14-foot-long bronze depicts two fishermen in a dory perched atop a vertical wave. The statue would sit on a bronze base, into which Del Deo plans to engrave a list of all the Provincetown and Truro fishermen who have died at sea — more than 900 names, according to King’s research.

    Del Deo first created a model for the design in 2011. He pitched it to a previous fishermen’s memorial committee — not the same one King leads now — that accepted it and presented it to the town for approval in early 2013.

    Town records show that Del Deo’s dory design was unanimously approved by the Provincetown Art Commission, the Provincetown Public Pier Corp., and the town’s select board in 2013. At least one approval had a condition: that any “significant changes” made to the design be subject to another round of voting, according to records of the 2013 art commission meeting.

    According to a budget provided by King, $500,000 will cover roughly $90,000 in sculpting costs, more than $255,000 to cast the model in bronze, and roughly $71,000 in engineering and installation costs.

    Del Deo said that, at present, he is not being compensated for his time spent working on the memorial and that he knows he may never be. The current committee’s $500,000 budget does not include an artist’s fee. He is not a member of the new committee.

    “They’re going to need everything they can get,” Del Deo said. If the committee can raise more than $500,000, Del Deo said, he hopes to be paid an amount roughly equal to the casting costs for the sculpture — which he estimated at $185,000.

    “It would be nice if they could raise enough to pay me, but that’s not a condition of me doing this,” Del Deo said.

    Despite the steep cost of Del Deo’s design, King opted to stick with it because commissioning a new, cheaper design and going before the town for approval again would take time, money, and resources that King thinks would be better spent elsewhere.

    “Building a local monument is a very hard thing to do,” said Del Deo, who said he has been involved in the construction of at least 50 large-scale memorials. “It’s always fraught with the intersections of creative demands, financial demands, and political demands,” he said.

    ‘A Classic Provincetown Story’

    The story of the memorial begins in 1977. Rachel White, who was born in Provincetown in 1933 and still lives here, was among the first group to propose the idea to the select board. The proposal was accepted in 1977, according to town records, but that didn’t come with funding.

    A medallion and two maquettes show previous iterations of Romolo Del Deo’s design for the memorial, circa 2013. (Photo by Molly Reinmann)

    “There just wasn’t any money,” White said. In subsequent years, some small donations came in from family members of fishermen who had been lost, but it was never enough to advance the project.

    In 1986, White and that first committee hoped to energize the effort by holding a contest to select an artist for the memorial. The committee invited residents to vote on the designs at town hall. Del Deo — recently out of college — entered the contest. His first design, which depicts a fisherman holding a fishing box, is now in the permanent collection at PAAM.

    But the vote went awry when Malcolm Paul Newman, one of the nominated artists, stuffed the ballot box for his own entry, according to White.

    “Once we found out about that scandal, we couldn’t move forward with any design because it was an unfair thing,” White said. “And so that fell through the cracks, and on and on it went.”

    “It’s a classic Provincetown story,” Del Deo said.

    The project was picked up again in 2010, this time by Carol Peters, the daughter of a local fisherman. Peters’s committee — composed of, among others, Peter Cook, Kerry Adams, Silvia Newman, Kevin McLaughlin, and Luis Ribas — got tentative approval from the select board and the visitor services board to move forward with planning, town records show.

    After having lived away for nearly 25 years, Del Deo moved back to Provincetown in January 2011. In February of that year, he saw an ad calling for designs for Peters’s revived fishermen’s memorial project.

    By the end of the year, he had produced a rough model for the memorial — the same dory model he is in the process of enlarging now. He said he was offered the design role in 2012.

    The committee kicked off fundraising and formal planning in 2013, obtaining design approval from the necessary town boards that May.

    A Big Budget

    Despite making more headway than any previous effort, the 2013 committee disbanded in 2016 because of irreconcilable differences of opinion about expenses.

    A rough wax sculpture of one of the fishermen for the memorial underway in Romolo Del Deo’s Provincetown studio. (Photo by Molly Reinmann)

    A document obtained by the Independent shows a breakdown of the budget for Del Deo’s 2013 proposal. The numbers are close to the present-day ones: the gross cost was put at $468,000, with $325,000 going to the net costs of the sculpture. One difference, though, is that back then the total included an artist’s fee of $65,000 and an agent’s fee of $78,000.

    According to Del Deo, Peters’s committee was “fully aware” of the cost of his memorial design when they approved his proposal in 2013.

    Provincetown attorney Chris Snow said he did not recall any contract binding the committee to Del Deo’s half-million-dollar design.

    “I don’t know if the figure was insurmountable, but it was definitely large enough that it should have required a consensus,” Snow said. While he respects Del Deo’s artistic talent, he said, he imagines the committee, which he said consisted of volunteers of “modest means,” was “aghast” at the $500,000 price.

    Kerry Adams, the treasurer of the 2013 committee who is now in jail on child pornography charges, told the Provincetown Banner in 2016 that the committee was “never anticipating” a half-million-dollar budget for the project.

    Del Deo said that, after joining the previous committee, he began to worry about its members’ lack of fundraising experience.

    “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” Del Deo said.

    With fundraising off to a slow start, Del Deo said he recruited Chris King — Lisa King’s brother, who ran several local businesses and had already made a large donation to the project — to chair the committee in late 2013.

    King joined and then suggested the committee reevaluate the design choice and pursue a cheaper plan, according to Del Deo, who said that the committee then capped its fundraising goal at $150,000 — “nowhere near enough” to build his design.

    Chris King declined to comment for this story, as did five other members of the previous committee.

    Del Deo refused to change course. By the time the push to change the design began, he said, at least $15,000 of the donated money had been spent on creating small bronze maquettes of the design.

    Del Deo officially parted ways with the committee in 2016, keeping the rights to the memorial design, while the group kept the money that had been raised and the name “Fishermen’s Memorial.”

    Following the schism, the committee stopped working on the project.

    In June 2016, the Provincetown Portuguese Festival Committee unveiled an unrelated memorial plaque in Portuguese Square dedicated to local fishermen lost at sea.

    According to Don Murphy, the former director of the festival, Chris King was involved in the creation of the plaque, but he said it was funded entirely by the festival committee and used none of the funds raised by the previous fishermen’s memorial committee.

    Del Deo said he continued working on the project in his free time even after being ousted by the previous committee. “I don’t like to start something I don’t finish,” he said. “It drives me nuts.” He began enlarging the design in 2022.

    Bigger Than Provincetown

    The current fishermen’s memorial committee has not yet raised much, according to Michael Chute, the committee member overseeing fundraising. But Chute and Lisa King are both confident that this committee will be the one to finally raise the $500,000.

    Unlike previous committees — which Chute said prioritized soliciting local donations — the current group believes that the project is “bigger than just Provincetown.”

    The committee is in the process of applying for grants statewide, Chute said, but he declined to say where it hopes to get the money.

    Chute is also contacting people — both in Provincetown and beyond —who have donated to similar campaigns in the past.

    “This is a small town,” said Chute. “You can only tap it for so long.”

    The current committee kicked off its fundraising endeavors at the Portuguese festival, where King raffled off an old photograph of Captain Jack’s Wharf; the event raised $2,000. King has dozens more old photographs — from both her family’s and Ross Moffett’s collections of glass plate negatives — that she plans on raffling in the future.

    “There’s a lot of money in this town,” Lisa King said. “The billionaires are pushing out the millionaires right now. We’re not counting on that, but there is a general consensus here that we need to honor these people.”

    White, who has tried to follow the development of the fishermen’s memorial project, was hopeful but less confident about the potential for success from the newest committee.

    “I’m 90, and I’ve always said the two things I want to see before I kick the bucket were a new police station and for this fishermen’s memorial to finally get built,” she said. “One of two ain’t bad!”

     

    FOLLOWING THE MONEY

    50 Years of Fundraising

    One enduring question from the 50-year history of the fishermen’s memorial project is how much money has been raised and where that money is now. The Independent tried to track all funds raised for the cause since its genesis in 1976.

    1976-2010: A 2014 letter from former Provincetown Finance Director Dan Hoort says that a fishermen’s memorial trust fund was established at Seamen’s Bank in the 1980s. The fund had a balance of $676 in 2014. Seamen’s Bank declined to provide information about the account.

    2013: According to a records obtained by the Independent, at least $26,000 had been raised for the fishermen’s memorial project from at least 31 donors as of July 2013. The money came from several different endeavors. Romolo Del Deo said that many members of the committee — including himself, Chris King, Kerry Adams, and Kevin McLaughlin — made large personal contributions. The committee also collected tax-deductible donations through a partnership with the Provincetown Community Compact, which served as fiscal sponsor for the project. In June 2013, the Berta Walker Gallery hosted a fundraiser and unveiling of Del Deo’s model for the memorial. At the event, several maquettes of the design were sold, and proceeds from the sales — at least $15,000, according to records — were donated.

    2014: According to compact founder Jay Critchley, the collaboration between the previous fishermen’s memorial committee and his organization was terminated by a committee member in 2014. At the request of the committee, he transferred the balance in the group’s fund to a Provincetown fishermen’s memorial fund established at the Cape Cod Foundation. Critchley did not remember how much money was left in the fund at that time, but Lisa King said she was told by the foundation that the fund balance was about $7,000.

    2014: Kristin O’Malley, the president of the Cape Cod Foundation, confirmed the existence of a Provincetown fishermen’s memorial fund and said that the fund “has not been active within the past few years.” She did not respond to questions about how much money is currently in the fund.

    2016-2023: Del Deo said he continued fundraising for the project during these years on his own, through fiscal sponsor Fractured Atlas. He said he has raised roughly $30,000.

    2023-present: Lisa King says “zero dollars” have made their way to her current group from funds raised by the previous committees. The new committee has raised roughly $5,000 so far. —Molly Reinmann

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    Bass Fishing Heats Up, but Bluefish Are Nowhere to Be Found

    Remembering ‘JB’ Browne, one of Provincetown’s legendary fishermen

    By

    Fishing for striped bass took a giant leap forward last week as the area between Race Point and Peaked Hill Bar exploded on July 4 like the fireworks that were on display that evening. We had 27 people on the CeeJay catch 35 bass that day — 15 of which were in the slot size for keepers.

    We weren’t the only ones. Capt. Russ on the Lisa Z, Capt. Nico Pace of Cape Tip’n, and Capt. Rich Wood of the Beth Ann all reported huge catches of bass on the Fourth in that same area. We hope this is the beginning of a protracted run that simply started late this season. There is a wide range of sizes in these schools of fish, and that’s good news. We are seeing fish as small as 24 inches and as big as 45.

    Peter Johnson of Westport, Conn. with a 31-inch keeper caught on July 4. (Photo by Mike Rathgeber)

    Bluefish are a different story. They have all but disappeared for the time being. Small schools have shown up erratically in the south end of bay, according to the charter boat captains out of Rock Harbor, but there has been very little bluefish activity in our end of the bay and virtually no activity on the oceanside beaches and beyond. Where these fish are is anyone’s guess. My hunch is they are farther offshore by the shipping lanes in deeper water.

    The bay has been quite a dead zone for most of the summer, and I wish someone would look into why that is so. It could be random choices fish make as to where they roam and feed, but I’m not buying that. In my opinion something is wrong with our bay water that is keeping game fish scarce: first it was the fluke that stopped coming, then striped bass, and now bluefish.

    Fishing on the town wharf has been good at night, with mackerel and squid coming in under the lights pretty consistently.

    We are starting to see whales now down the back side by Race Point and the Ranger Station. This week we were treated to minke whales, fin whales, humpbacks, and white-sided dolphins all hanging around. They are a bit too far offshore to see from the beach but close enough for boat fishermen to get magnificent views.

    Commercial bass fishermen, what few of them there are left now, are struggling to catch fish that are commercial size (35 inches or larger), and if they struggle to meet this year’s quota that could mean radical rule changes next season. So far, only 13.8 percent of this year’s 683,773-pound season limit has been met. That’s not good. Fishermen will get an additional open day per week in August if the catch remains under 30 percent of the quota.

    Tuna fishing has been pretty quiet. The giants seem to be north of us, and the smaller recreational-size fish that moved into our area earlier are no longer around.

    On Sunday, I learned of the death of a truly legendary man of our wharf. John “JB” Browne, who graduated from Provincetown High School in 1964, was an outstanding chef and fisherman and a good man everyone loved. He fished for everything, but he and Chad Avellar were inseparable during the commercial bass season for many years.

    JB had a boat he kept at a Dolphin Fleet float, and on commercial bass days, when he was out on his little center console, he’d see me and direct me as to where to start my drift. My passengers would say, “Are you going to let that guy in that little boat tell you where to go?” And I would say, “Him? You bet I am!”

    I have been on this wharf long enough to know some of the real highliners we’ve lost: Bobby Cabral, Manny Phillips, Johnny Woods, Al and Aaron Avellar, David Dutra, and Gerald Costa come to mind, among many others. If there is a roundtable for these giants to gather at in the afterlife, JB would certainly be welcomed. He earned his place at it.

    ON THE BEACH

    A Fisherman’s Luck

    Skill is one thing, but how to explain the hits and hookups that happen on the very last cast?

    By

    Knowing a backshore beach’s structures — the deeps, shallows, and river-like troughs between the shore and the first sandbar — is as important to catching fish as knowing the tides, the wind, and the kind and quantity of bait to use.

    In my mind as I set out from Newcomb Hollow Beach on my annual low-tide pilgrimage to study its cuts and basins was the idea that this was strictly a data-gathering expedition. But I had no intention of breaking Cape Cod’s holiest of beach-fishing canons: travel without a fishing rod at your peril. No matter how smart or lucky you are, you can’t catch a fish on the beach without your rod.

    Almost a mile down the shore I approached a deep hole, the outlet of a river-like trough emptying over a long bar just off the beach. Small flapping silversides littered the beach along the tide line. Closer to the mouth of the current, I could see schools of tinker mackerel driving the frenzied baitfish ashore. The arrangement of sand and sea was ideal and promised to be a prolific fishing spot for months to come.

    This being a reconnaissance mission, I had no urge to try a cast. Until I saw the telltale splash of a much bigger fish at the edge of the bar. A quick flick of my white paddletail lure was all it took to hook up to a decent-size bass. The longer I fished, the larger the bass seemed to get as they poured over the bar and into the swift current. This energetic display of tinkers chasing silversides and bass assaulting tinkers kept me enthralled for a good 45 minutes.

    Even a seasoned fisherman can be forgiven for having a lucky shirt. (Photo by Necee Regis)

    On my return to Newcomb Hollow, I thought about how fortunate I had been to find fish on this summer’s first trip to the back shore. I wondered, was my success thanks to skill or sheer luck?

    That very morning I’d been casting next to Joe and two other fishing pals off Great Island, where big fish were greedily hitting our nine-inch silicon slug lures. Everyone except Joe was catching nice-size bass. He is a very competent fisherman and had dozens of strikes to his credit, but he hadn’t succeeded in hooking a single fish. “I’m cursed!” he shouted after each lost fish.

    When I left, I felt a tad ashamed for outfishing Joe for no apparent reason. Was he doing something wrong? Was it simple bad luck? A statistical anomaly? I pondered the odds of the latter possibility and instantly regretted having called out, “Good luck!” I knew my words would neither change his fortune nor assuage his despair.

    Luck seems to be the quality most people associate with fishing, as if fortune, rather than skill, knowledge, and perseverance were the defining element for success. It’s irksome to walk off the beach with a fat fish in hand — one you’ve landed in heavy surf after chasing it halfway to the next beach — and hearing someone shout, “Wow, weren’t you a lucky fisherman today!”

    Luck, good or bad, is tinged with otherworldly significance. Hidden beneath the banality of the term lurks a cosmic, even religious undertone, a leftover in our DNA, perhaps, from the time humans believed spirits, ghosts, saints, witches, and divinities determined our fates. It is difficult to shake the belief that luck is a commodity meted out by a higher power and determined principally by our good deeds or sins.

    This compulsion to believe in luck is not the preserve of fishermen alone. More than half of major league pitchers, for example, superstitiously avoid stepping on the foul line as they walk between the dugout and the mound. Here are people at the pinnacle of success, making millions of dollars, athletes who have been winners since Little League, who can’t let luck go.

    I admit to having my lucky shirt (always the last one worn while catching fish) and my favorite go-to lure when the fishing is slow (this spring, the big white silicon lure has risen to mystical status). I strongly believe that when the fishing is slow and I’m ready to leave, making 10 more casts is the best way to entice my quarry to show up. A good hit, of course, buys another 10 casts. I can’t tell you how many hits and hookups I’ve had on the very last cast. My pals and I have had serious discussions about this phenomenon and the consensus is that it works best when you announce out loud, “This will be my last cast!”

    When I was five or six, my grandparents bought me some wooden fish with steel eyes that floated in the bathtub. I spent hours tossing my magnetic “hook” to catch them, staying in the tub long after the water had cooled. At first, my success was random. But soon enough I learned how to hook the pretty play fish by aiming the magnet at the head rather than simply dragging my line through the water. In my imagination, these fish were not wooden but alive and infinitely challenging. I am still unable to look at any pool, river, or pond without imagining it full of colorful fish, which, with a bit of luck and a lot of skill, are mine to catch.

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    Of Flaky Fish and Future Storms

    Warm waters in the Caribbean, bonito in the bay

    By

    The fish cannot seem to make up their minds about where they want to be for more than a day at a time. It looked like they were settling in at Beach Point, and then they completely vacated the area. After that they showed up from Race Point to the Race Station for a day, and then, just like that, they left there as well.

    As soon as we think they have settled down, they’re off to another area. This suggests that the number of fish in our area is not very high right now. The stretch of bay between Wood End Light and Race Point Light, which for years has been the go-to area in June, has been noticeably dead so far this season. Trolling umbrella rigs and Jig-N-Eels have been more effective than drifting baits and casting lures.

    The rest of the bay has also been pretty quiet. A few bass were caught around the Herring Cove bathhouse for a day or so, but that’s been about it. Bluefish have been here today and gone tomorrow, too. We caught some big ones at Herring Cove, but the next day they were gone. Mackerel have all left the bay and are way up on Stellwagen Bank almost out of range for us to shoot up with a center console boat to get bait for upcoming trips.

    Atlantic bonito, also known as a skipjack, usually arrive in our waters in August. They are already here. (Photo courtesy NOAA)

    On the upside, flounder fishing remains good down in the bay by the #1 buoy off Sesuit Harbor. And schoolie tuna have shown up around Peaked Hill and north of Race Point and were seen busting the surface with a few being caught by trolling squid rigs and casting big poppers. Most of these fish have been in the 50- to 80-pound range.

    There’s also good news for whale watchers: the whales have returned from wherever they were to Stellwagen Bank and have been providing a good show. The usual pack of fin whales who cruise and feed in the Race Point area has yet to show this summer, but we’ll keep an eye out for them every day that we are out.

    The other thing we should all have an eye on is the situation going on in the waters south of us — all things being connected, this is critical to understanding what will eventually affect us here on the Cape.

    We all know by now that the Atlantic has been steadily warming overall. Now, a severe marine heat wave has developed in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico and off the Florida coast this month, where water temperatures are reaching the low 90° F mark, some 5 to 8 degrees higher than normal. The Florida Keys and the Bahamas are under a NOAA bleaching warning brought about by these record-high temperatures. High water temperatures place enormous stress on coral reefs and other marine ecosystems, and as the coral dies off it loses its color. This means, of course, a loss of habitat that supports fish and other marine life.

    These record temperatures, besides killing coral, will also fuel stronger hurricanes. Colin McCarthy, the atmospheric science student at U.C. Davis who with his US Stormwatch social media account has become one of the most followed weather analysts in the country, puts it in simple terms: “Just a 2° F rise in sea surface temperatures can increase a hurricane’s wind speeds by over 13 percent,” he told Newsweek in a June 3 interview. “This means a 140 m.p.h. Category 4 hurricane can become a 160 m.p.h. Category 5 (in favorable atmospheric conditions), with nearly 3 times the damage potential.”

    Add to all this a La Niña creating favorable conditions for hurricane development, and NOAA has issued its most aggressive hurricane season forecast on record for 2024.

    As for what’s happening in our marine environment right now, we already have 70-degree surface temperatures in the bay. The first bonito, a warm-water fish that typically doesn’t show up here until our waters hit peak highs in August, have already arrived and are being caught in the bay way ahead of schedule.

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    An Odd Pod off Nantucket and Rambunctious Dolphins in Provincetown

    Fishing heats up with bass, schoolie-size tuna, and the first of the blues

    By

    I wrote last week that fishing being what it is, we could have a 180-degree turnaround from the slow showing of bass. Well, we did. Striped bass made a big rebound in the last week, with fish showing up in many places, notably the Race Station to Peaked Hill and in the bay at the Beach Point cottages all the way to the Pamet. Drifting baits were effective, but so was casting diamond jigs and trolling umbrella rigs.

    Unfortunately, the mackerel have left the bay for now and are up on Stellwagen Bank. I had to go up to Stellwagen the other day to catch mackerel for my upcoming trip, and I was rather disappointed in the lifelessness on the bank that day. No whales or seabirds anywhere to be found, and no boats fishing, either. There were a lot of mackerel and herring on the bank, but that was pretty much it.

    Atlantic white-sided dolphins romp through Provincetown Harbor. (Photo by Mike Rathgeber)

    Bluefish have filtered into the area right on schedule, with fish being caught not only in the Race and down back along the ocean beaches but also in the bay off the Pamet.

    There was an unusual whale sighting off Nantucket last week — something I think has never been seen before. A NOAA observation airplane spotted an enormous pod of around 160 whales, though scientists cautioned that it’s possible some whales were counted more than once. What made this sighting different was the fact that they spotted seven different types of whales all together in one place: according to NOAA’s social media post, the count was 93 sei whales, 36 humpbacks, 21 fin whales, and also minke, sperm, and right whales, plus two orcas. This was one of the highest concentrations of sei whales ever seen during a single survey flight.

    What makes this perplexing is that these whales have different diets, ranging from plankton to small schooling fish and including bluefin tuna and giant squid. One of the orcas had a tuna in its mouth. What all these whales were doing in one location is anyone’s guess, but if the right whales in the group somehow find a way into our waters, don’t forget the 10-mile-per-hour baywide speed limit could be reinstated, and the high-speed ferries would be shut down until the whales leave the area. Let’s hope those right whales take another route to the Bay of Fundy.

    Fishing for schoolie-size bluefin tuna was white hot off Chatham in the area of the Regal Sword wreck this past week. The Regal Sword was a 575-foot freighter that sank with a cargo of scrap metal after a collision with a tanker 45 years ago, on June 18, 1979. It’s about 25 miles southeast of Chatham. It sure would be nice if those tuna found their way to our area the way they did last June.

    Whale watching has been challenging lately, but the whales will be back. It’s hard to predict when, though. It’s a big ocean, and whales do what whales do without checking with us first. We did have a fantastic visit by a rather rambunctious pod of Atlantic white-sided dolphins last week. They were flying around at breakneck speed and covered pretty much the entire harbor, including swimming through the West End mooring field.

    Commercial fishing for striped bass opened on June 18. Fishermen are allowed to fish only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays this season. A 35-inch minimum is still in play, along with a 15-fish-per-day bag limit. That will keep market prices north of $20 per pound for sure.

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    Old Thom Is Back

    Bass fishing slows, flounder fishing is good; the future is hard to fathom

    By

    Striped bass fishing slowed this past week, as the fish seem to have moved out of the bay, and the few that are around are down on the ocean side from the Race Point Station east to Highland Light.

    They had a fairly poor bass season south of us. Here, though, we’ve been holding out hope that maybe the fish changed their migration pattern and came north farther offshore this year, holing  up where they can’t be legally fished but ready to move in any time. I do not want to sound like Mr. Doom-and-Gloom here, but right now things are looking rather inauspicious.

    By now we usually have solid fishing from the Twin Hills behind Long Point to the Race Point Station. There are baitfish everywhere, notably pogies, sand eels, and mackerel, so a lack of food is not the reason we’re not seeing bass in big numbers.

    Fishing being what it is, we all know the situation can do a 180-degree turnaround tomorrow. If and when it does, we’ll breathe a collective sigh of relief. But at the moment most of us are scratching our heads and wondering what’s going on.

    Flounder fishing has still been good in depths of 25 to 40 feet from the Pamet all the way down to the sea buoy off Sesuit Harbor.

    Orcas are observed in pods, like these photographed in Alaska, but Old Thom visits the Cape’s waters alone. (Photo courtesy NOAA)

    Old Thom the orca whale has been spotted off Chatham. The sighting, reported June 2 by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, was the first of this season. Old Thom is a male North Atlantic orca known for being the only orca to routinely be seen both in the Gulf of Maine and in the Bay of Fundy. He is a loner whale, which is very unusual for these toothed creatures that typically travel in pods. Old Thom has never been seen with other orcas. He is often seen in the company of Atlantic white-sided dolphins, however. They seem to feed alongside him at times.

    With the steady increase in the population of seals and the gradual increase in bluefin tuna, perhaps we will see Old Thom hanging around a little more. Maybe these animals, both among the orca’s preferred prey, will attract some other orcas to the area. Since just last year, Orcas have been observed hunting Atlantic white sharks, apparently prizing their livers, according to a BBC news report published in March citing the African Journal of Marine Science.

    An unprecedented sighting that was reported in the Indie on June 6 really put the changes on our planet in view: a single flamingo was seen and photographed at Chapin Beach in Dennis. Flamingoes are usually seen in large flocks and are very much a tropical animal. Long Island has a few pelicans; now Cape Cod has a flamingo. Plus, tropical fish such as triggerfish and cobia have been caught in Buzzards Bay, and mahi mahi have been caught out in the deep waters off Martha’s Vineyard. Meanwhile lobsters continue to migrate out of Long Island Sound and to some extent, it appears, from Cape Cod Bay, moving toward Maine.

    As I track all this, I think about what things will be like if we can’t reverse course on at least some climate trends. Will we even recognize our natural habitat in the not-so-distant future?

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