Dunks N Dinks

Got out again in the cold yday on Long Pond. Not exactly another barn-burner of a day but did get two quality bites with a 2.26lb smallie and 3.75lb largie. Most bites were shallower than expected despite 31 degree air temps and 43 degree water. Neds and jerkbaits again did the trick.

Got some human social distance and even better bass close quarters contact today on Wequaq. Buddy and I had a 40 fish day (~20% pickerel) after finding a few schools of 1-2lbers up shallow chasing perch. Jerkbaits and ned rigs all day. biggest of the session was 3.2lber. Followed the schools in circles on the graph in 8-12fow for almost 2 hours pretty wild.

Got on the board (in Mass) today on the home lake. Buddy and I nabbed a handful of smallies each in 17-25fow on an offshore flat. Blades did the dirty work, with the biggen of the day at about 3.35lbs taking a 5/8oz gold binsky. Looks like the Cape lakes will get through this Winter ice-less, pretty awesome start to the year. Good luck all.

Got in some early Spring training this past saturday down on the Big O. Didn't time the moon right so we targeted these lovely pre-spawners on the outside reed-edges with swimbaits and swimjigs in 5-6ft early in the morning, then transitioned to flipping plastics in the afternoon. Only 13-14 bites fishing the north shore, but quality was decent.

anyone getting out tomorrow? Might drizzle but there's plenty of open water on the Cape?

anyone know a good site (other than Ebay) to sell/trade used electronics...I have a Helix 9 G2N GPS/Sonar unit and transducer for sale....and a humminbird 360

Cape Update: Stocking Stuffers A buddy and I got a handful of Xmas-eve eve hooksets in on Harwich...a real holiday miracle (at least compared to my low bar of expectations). Water temps were a balmy 39 degrees, but under 4 layers and in the sun I almost felt the urge to take off the neoprene jacket. After a good deal of graphing, we found a surprisingly shallow ledge with deep water access that had a couple tell-tale arches in close proximity. Over the course of a few hours, we nabbed a few brownies each and called it a day before the wind kicked up. My biggest (~3.75lb) came on a blade, while my buddy got a couple of 3’s on a mudbug Ned.

Anyone care to share their end of season analysis? and perhaps what your strengths/weaknesses were? I went through my 2019 freshwater log last night and came away with these stats which you might find interesting/helpful... -> Biggest smallie (5.1 caught on ned rig in early May), biggest larry (5.2 on drop-shot in late May), 2nd biggest smallie (4.7 caught on tube in early October), 2nd biggest largemouth (5.1 on swimbait in early September) - unsurprisingly, this suggests the spawn and fall feeding windows are the most likely periods to catch better than average fish. -> Most keepers in a day (27 largemouth, 20 of which came on Megabass Jerkbait in late March) - this day caught me off guard for sure at the time, and now with the benefit of hindsight, suggests to me that some early spring outings (even within days of ice-out) can be magical if the right conditions are present (warming trend, sunlight, shallow and schooled up fish) -> Bait breakdown for >4lb bass (24) - roughly 30% on a jerkbait, 20% swimbait, 20% ned rig, 10% drop-shot, 10% topwater, 5% chatterbait 5% flipping plastic - what's interesting to me is what baits are absent (no jig fish, senko-style, spinnerbait or crankbait), not sure if that's reflective of the conditions or my lack of skill with those techniques haha -> Baits breakdown for all keepers (top 7 by #s) - 1) jerkbait 2) swimbait 3) senko 4) ned rig 5) drop-shot 6) chatterbait 7) topwater - once again, jigs, t-rig plastics, spinnerbaits and crank baits didnt make the list, which is surprising to me given how often i throw them. I guess one takeaway could be that at least I was able to set those baits down fast enough to recognize the fish wanted something else. -> Seasonal Strengths/Weaknesses - Based on number of keepers and limits in tourneys, pre-spawn and spawn seems to be a strength of mine, while the post-spawn and late-fall period seems like an area to focus and improve in. -> Depth Observations - 82% of my keepers in 2019 were caught in 8ft of water or less, which tells me that I need to work a bit more on my offshore game...at least find more confidence in mapping and then giving offshore deep spots time to develop. This was definitely a focus of mine early this year (with some marginal success catching pre-spawn smallies ) but i kidna got away from this as the year progressed. -> Bait breakdown: best bait colors by season - Pre-spawn (green pumpkin, red, orange), Spawn (gp, brown), Summer (gp, yellow, black, purple), Fall (silver, gp). While certainly biased by my preference for green/brown shades, my guess-timation here is that perch (green,orange) and craw (brown,red) might play a larger role in forage early in the year, with craw (brown) and bluegills (green, yellow, purple?) playing a larger role in the summer before alewives/minnows (silver, black) come into fashion in the colder fall months...just a thought. -> Off-season goals: simplification. I want to pare back my tackle (color and technique-wise) to what are proven baits and then only selectively throw new baits/techniques in situations ive struggled in. I think this means I can pretty much give up on expanding my spinnerbait and crank-baits boxes until I can find scenarios where they can outperform a chattterbait (which i think has filled that vibration/flash role for me). Technique-wise, I think I definitely lean more towards trying to force a power-fishing bite to a fault , which means a weakness might be slowing down (hence my impatience and inability to get bit on jigs this year). Elsewhere, I definitely want to get more confidence fishing deeper...which likely means more time with a spinning rod and finesse gear in hand.

Cape Update: One Bite (Everyone Knows the Rules) Got out for four hours on Wequaq prior to the Pats game. The air and water temps were both in the low-to-mid 40s, but the 20mph gusts out of the north made it "feel" like Lambeau field. Not counting a handful of toothy critters, I only got one bite...but it was a dandy. By far the best quality i've found this late in the year. She went 4.8lbs and knocked the snot out of a very over-priced jerk-bait (or maybe not? lol). Released her after a quick pic....gosh i hope she's in that same spot come next Spring.

Cape Update: Not Done Yet Got out on Long Pond Sunday (air: 44, water: 52) after about a month off from freshwater and initially struggled to figure out a cold-water pattern. Marked plenty of bait (alewives and perch), but couldn't dial up the right presentation. Took me until the afternoon to find a school of receptive largies stacked off the edge of a deep flat, which summarily fell victim to a vertically fished drop-shot. Managed 3 of these 1.5lb-ers out of the area before they turned tail and scattered. From there I decided to swing the big bat and up-sized to a soft swimbait and 3/4oz spinnerbait. I went shallow as the afternoon sun got high and C-R-A-W-L-E-D these across a few of my favorite hard-bottom spots. The size of the bait didnt seem to an issue, but my hookup ratio was...i had several smallies connect and then disconnect on the big spinnerbait. On the swimmer, i ended up keeping two buttoned. One was a healthy 2lber that clearly big-eyed the bait, while the biggun of the day was a 3.6lb larry that smoked the hudd on the fall.

Cape Fresh/Salt Report: Turning Tail Fished the final E.MA NEBassin team event on Mashpee Saturday. Conditions were pretty gnarly, temps in the low to mid-50s (water ~60) with a driving 20-25mph N wind. The bite was very tough after 3 days of rain and sustained 30mph winds leading into the tourney. Our plan going in was to keep the top-water bite honest early, then focus on deep smallies on edges of flats for the remainder of the day. Things didn't exactly pan out that way unfortunately; I did have a decent smallie bust on my spook on my 3rd cast in the AM, but it threw the hooks before i could winch him boat-side. Fast-forward 5 hours and we still didn't have a keeper in the live-well. We marked plenty of fish on the edges of deeper flats, but they were full-on lock-jawed (not tempted by blades or drop-shots). I ended up salvaging our day, catching 2x 3lbers on a finesse swim-bait in the last hour or so on nearly back to back casts right up against a deeper weed-line, but that was it for the session. Our bag went for 6lbs and change, and somehow made for a 4th place finish out of 14 teams (no limits weighed, 4.2lb lunker). This also gave us a respectable top-3 finish in AOY points. With the freshwater derby season in the rear-view, I got offshore on Sunday in the swell and it made for a bit more productive day. After a few hours of running around in search of live bait, we managed to set up a nice drift through some whales/birds in 200ft off water off Chatham and ran into a nice recreational Blue-Fin.

No freshwater outing this weekend, but I did score a nice recreational Bluefin Saturday a few miles off Chatham...60" and did a number on my 50W

Had a challenging session out on Mashpee Saturday. Fished from first light until 4pm and only managed 4 keeper bites. Conditions didn't help, bluebird skies and hardly any wind to stir up the surface. Water temps started on the chilly side around 65, the surface warming up to 68-69 by the afternoon. After two hours of trying to force a top-water bite to no avail, I spent most of the day looking for productive offshore areas, and even found a couple spots with a healthy combination of a depth change, bait, and grass. There was no shortage of prey fish, huge balls of 1-2" minnows, but I couldn't coax anything to bite under/around these schools. Either the fish were keyed onto this micro-forage, or they just weren't all that active (had a few short-strikes on a drop-shot'd finesse swimmer). It wasn't until I moved a tad shallower and towards the inside-edge of grass formations that i made first contact around 2pm. Even then, the bite didn't feel "on", by any means. I managed to nab 4 smallies in the next 2hrs, making long casts with a finesse under-spin, with most hitting it close to the initial fall (so I'm assuming the strike-zone was fairly small). Got a little lucky and plopped one of my last casts near a quality sally, getting to briefly share the boat with this 19.5" beauty.

Derby Report: Last Dance on Lakeville Also fished the second to last NEBassin team trail event on Lakeville Saturday. Needless to say, with the amount of fishing pressure the place receives, and the recent storm blowing through, expectations were skewed to the low-side. Compounding the feeling, conditions set up a bit challenging as well, with a full-moon / chilly morning arrival at the ramp (air ~52 warming to 70, water ~65) with forecasts for a 13-15mph blow out of the South in the afternoon. Fortunately enough, my partner pulled a #1 boat chip, so we had the pick of starting spots. Unfortunately, we didn't have much confidence in any of our spots lol. Fast-forward 4hrs, and we had 1 fish for <2.5lbs in the 'well, having covered most of the horse-shoe canal in the northern-most area of the lake and a swath of the grass beds that extend from 4ft to 7ft in that basin. Scrambling for clues as the winds started to kicked-up, we down-sized and went ultra-shallow in a wind-protected pockets, skipping docks and bushes. Stumbling across a handful of active shallow bank-runners, we filled out our limit playing this pattern in 3 areas, but that only yielded us about a 7-7.5lb limit. After making several small ounce-worthy upgrades running up to about ~2pm, with time in short supply, we came to face a familiar dilemma; pursue the current pattern in hopes of better quality or switch tactics to target a different class of fish? After limited debate (lol), we chose the latter. My partner armed himself with a 6" thru-line swimbait, while I upgraded to a frog, and we went lunker-huntin'. We went predictably fish-less for the next 40 mins, targeting isolated reed-lines and floating docks...but with 20 mins remaining...things got a little interesting... With morale quite low, we were pulling around a small rocky point in the mid-lake area with little intention of working that particular shore-line on the way to our next row of docks, when I pitched my frog next to an isolated reed stem and reared back on a fish. Having hit my bait the instant the lure hit the water, when the fish jumped, it revealed a single hook on the outside of its chin, which summarily popped loose in mid-air. In my frustration, thinking i had lost our only chance of an upgrade, my next cast was the classic into-the-wind backlash to end all backlashes. Throwing my rod down in disgust, my partner let out a confused "i think i got him???"... What he meant was that he had launched his swim-bait back into the fray just beyond the reed-stem and hooked into another (or the same) fish from the back of the boat. Rushing to the back, i managed to barely scoop the swim-bait fish with an outstretched net just as the treble gave way from the bass' jaw-line. As my partner culled out a line-squeaker for his 3lb upgrade, i turned and saw a subtle boil about 50ft off the side of the boat near the bank. With my frog out of operation, i picked up his swimbait rod and plopped the bait just beyond the swirl. On the third crank of the reel handle, she had it. Racing left, then right, ending with a tail-walk towards the boat, up came a fired-up female. My my hands shaking, i eased her in close enough for my buddy to lip her (forgetting we even had a net in all the commotion). While in the heat of the moment, i would have swore she was 5lbs when she jumped (haha dont we all), she ended up weighing 3.45lbs. When it was all said and done, we kinda just sat there and reflected on "what the heck just happened" and then came to our senses and zoomed back to weigh-in with a couple minutes to spare. Thanks to the last minute mania, we managed to cash out in 2nd place for the day with 11.53lbs. The winning limit was impressive, 14 and change (anchored by a 4.5lb lunker), while 12 out of 16 teams had limits (average limit around 7.5-8lbs). @Mr. Aquarium PM sent

@Mr. Aquarium Don't give up hope. The storm has the hard-tails a bit more spread out than in years past but I've had the best luck around slack tide in Nantucket Sound. Went out yesterday morning before the Pats game and ran into a couple blitzes. After casting plugs at them for an hour or two with only a few hookups, my buddy and I decided to set-up a mini troll formation (a few epoxies and a few plugs) and that made all the difference. Caught and released 8 or 9 green torpedoes in the two hours around slack

ya i was totally off-base. Definitely the cold front and high winds that had the water muddled up and sediment stratified. Looked at my notes from last two years and of the ponds i fish that i actually realized had turned-over, it was around 56-53 degrees. Most area lakes for me are in the high 60s still, so false alarm!

Turnover Chain? Been getting my behind kicked by Long Pond (Lakeville) the last few outings. Went out yesterday for 6-7hrs and only had 3 (somewhat random-feeling) reaction bites to show for it. Water temps have dropped to 68-69 from 75-77 a month ago, so this could be the turnover funk, while I imagine the recent front coming through didn't help things. Anyone have any suggestions to locate some fish during this time of year in dirtier waters?

CC Update: Bass Brother From Another Mother Got out on Cliffs Saturday evening for a few hours and got a 5-pounder on discount. Discount because it weighed 4.89 (but whats a few hundredths of an ounce between friends). Came on a new swim-bait I've been super psyched to try, which matches the thinner and rounder profile of a sunfish/blue-gill. Threw it up against a deeper weed-edge and let it count down on slack...3...2...1 and the line took off 5ft to the left! Sunday went out on the salt looking for Albies around Monomoy, but only found snapper blues. Ended up pushing way out in search of bass and finally marked (see image below) a few deep schools that birds were working on top (sand eels, macks, etc). Ended up finding some stripes below, and nabbed a >40" specimen jigging a RonZ. Hopefully the green rockets are in after the storm stirs the pot this week...

Quick Cape Report: Got out on Wequaq for a few hours Sunday morning in the fog and got a coupla grown ones. Call me crazy but i think this was the first moderation in water temps i've spied so far this year, with surface temps ranging from 77-79, down from 82-84 about two weeks ago. Either way, it didn't seem to matter all that much to the Larries, with my two best bites coming from shallow heavy grass on a finesse flippin setup. Weird thing was i couldnt buy a topwater bite first thing...maybe the front coming in had them all buried overnight.

Derby Report: Knockin' Rocks Fished a team-tourney on S. Watuppa Saturday and by all accounts (caught a limit and kept my boat in one piece), I am happy with the results. Unfortunately, I cant say the same for some of the rest of the field; Rock-tuppa is known for eating lower units, and it got at least one more this past weekend. Safe to say I hope I wont be returning for a while, given the quality of fish there isn't great... That being said, someone always seems to catch 'em, and this weekend was no exception. We finished just a few ounces out of third place with 11.90lbs, with the leaders sacking up a healthy 14lb bag. There were 5-6 (out of 16) teams that brought in >10lbs, while only 3-4 teams failed to secure a limit. Big fish was a healthy looking 5lb largie that ate a ned-craw type presentation in 8ft of water (or so the angler alleged haha). Given my past experience on Watuppa (two days not even getting a limit), my confidence heading into the whole deal wasn't exactly sky high, but then again, I felt like our team didn't really have anything to lose either. Our game-plan was very limited, so we really just tried to roll with the conditions... Starting from the top-down, the conditions (partly sunny, 70-80 deg, West wind 10-15mph) set up fairly well for power-fishing, so we set out to try to establish an area with active fish. It took us ~3hrs to do so, but eventually we settled on fishing the wind-driven NW shores after getting a few non-keeper bites on topwater/squarebills. From there, we slowed down a bit and took a two-pronged approach, I threw a 1/2oz chatterbait while my partner dredged deeper rock with a 3/4oz FB jig. My partner nabbed a decent 2lber out in front of a concrete retaining wall, and then the ball started rolling from there...at one point I managed to catch three bass on three casts off the front lip of this concrete structure, as it seems like there were schools of 1.5-2.5lb fish moving in to trap bait-fish blown up against the rocks (even some gulls got in on the action). From there out, we ran around milking similar concrete / retaining walls scenarios on the Western shore, and it seemed like we'd come into contact with a school every hour or so. We managed to cull 5-6 times by the end of the day, but never came into contact with a quality bite (our biggest ~2.7lbs). If I'd done it again, I think I'd of focused a bit deeper (8-10ft vs 4-6ft) for better quality once we'd gotten a half-decent limit.

Haven't hit freshwater since my slow-ish tourney day on Whitehall Rez last month, but I have been putting in some time offshore and was lucky enough to get my first Blue-fin Tuna of the year last weekend...talk about meat in the freezer lol!

Derby Report: Most Little Fish Pre-fished and then fished a team tourney on Whitehall Thursday/Saturday. Thursday was textbook pre-frontal conditions, with pockets of clouds and even light rain to get the fish fired up. Caught a few decent 2-3lb fish froggin in sparse pad fields, flipping a senko around, and then finally punch’d up a biggun that weighed 4.4lbs (below). Most better bites were around isolated heavy cover (dollar-pads and wood lay downs). Tourney time, on the other hand, came with textbook post-frontal problems. Water temps were up to 82, while air temps got up to 87 with bluebird skies and little wind. We never ended up getting bit on frogs after a few hours of trying to force the issue. However, after downsizing our flipping presentation, we went on a decent rally, getting 20-25 bites in the final 4.5hrs of the day. We never got a big bite though, weighing in 10lbs to earn a 4th place finish. Winners had 15 and change with a 6lb slob that they said took down a frog in open water.

Fished Long Pond Friday from morning light until the wakeboard & booze cruise brigade came out in force around 1pm. Most action came within the first few hours, with cloud cover making for a perfect topwater session. I started with a pop-r but quickly switched to a walker to cover a bit more ground. Bites mostly came over top and around emergent grass in 2-4ft of water. Mostly largemouths in the east end with an occasional smallie mixed in. As the sun came out I targeted steeper banks with wood/rock and managed a few more decent keepers on a ned rig but the activity level definitely waned with the light and boat activity. Finished the day early with10 or 11 fish with the biggest a 4.2 larry on the top-walker (attached). Water temp was 76 degrees and on the rise. Saturday got out on Wequaquet first thing in the morning and kept the topwater pattern on track. Had maybe 8-9 small ones on a plopper by 8am but that shut off shortly. Tried flipping pads and docks unsuccessfully for the next few hours, with the wind picking up to 14-15mph from 6-7mph earlier. Spent the rest of the session fishing a few offshore spots with a swing-head, managing a late flurry of 3-4 smallies on a rocky island spot that tops out in 5ft near a 12ft drop. Decent quantity of bites on the day but definitely lacking quality as the water has turned to bath water (81 degrees by end of day)

https://sdfish.com/general/dark-secret-americas-big-bass-guru-mike-long/ crazy story if you havent seen it yet...

Derby & Cape Salt Update: Team tourney outing at S. Watuppa was predictably stingy; brought 3 dinks and one 3.25lber to the scales for a middle of the pack finish. Few had limits and even fewer had put a pattern together in the post-spawn conditions. Water temps were ~72 degrees and visibility was on par with chocolate milk. We thought we had a decent offshore rock-pile bite going first thing in the morning, but after two quick bites, we went scoreless for 4.5hrs. Tough place to fish! On Sunday, we got out on the south side of the Cape to chase Bass of another kind. We ended up scouring the miles of rips off the south side of Monomoy and connected with 8-9 fish. Caught 4 keepers and had biggest one go about 34". Caught a few drifting live macks, a few other on SP Minnows trolled. Had one very cool bite on a weighted treble that i threw into a bunker school that never made it back to the boat...bass picked it right out of the fray after i had snagged it. Saltwater bite should be getting better and better in the next few weeks given the density of the bait out there.