Cape Cod Bay Fishing Report - Week of July 10

The bass are out there; however, this week's breezy conditions made it difficult to get to them.

As far as Cape Cod Bay is concerned, stripers are holding in fairly deep water. Most of the bass, in the stretch from the canal to Billingsgate, will be found in water depths of 55 feet, or deeper still. This makes it difficult to locate the fish, and stay with the bass once you find them.

We were fortunate to get into some decent size fish this past week. Yet to be transparent, it took a lot of time and some serious effort to get those bass to the boat. To say I spent a few hours staring at my sonar screen would be a severe understatement.

Yet,hearing the drag scream after hooking up with a corky 35 pound fish makes the wait well worth it. The heavy north wind we had on Thursday should have mixed things up a bit, and I would not be surprised if more bass filter into the Bay over the coming week.

There are a lot of big bass holding off Chatham right now. Let's hope they get their act together, swim around Provincetown, and make a hard left turn for the Barnstable shoreline.

What Worked this Past Week

Finding an area with fish proved to be the most challenging hurdle this past week. It was necessary to dump a bit more fuel in the gas tank, and cover a few more miles than usual.

Early on during a midweek trip, we were fortunate to mark a fairly decent sized school in 70 feet of water, that decided to sit under the Miss Loretta for about 10 minutes. Pitching live eels ontop of these fish was a blast, and we quickly brought three bass in the high 20 pound range to the boat.

Unfortunately, as soon as we found these fish, they dissapeared yet again.

The remainder of that trip, along with last week's other two fishing expeditions yielded no more large schools of bass. Instead, we would cruise around until we marked one or two fish, deploy the tube and worm rigs, and hammer the area.

Being patient and letting the tubes do their thing accounted for a few more fish in the 20 and 30 pound range, however, they were few and far between. The key to success proved to be finding a general area with at least a little life in it, and repeatedly trolling through the location.

What Did Not Work this Past Week

Spots closer to shore did not produce any action for us. Barnstable Harbor, Scorton Ledge and the Sandy Neck beachfront refused to cough up any bass. Maybe a few of you readers found better success in these spots.

Fishing well known areas, like the Fingers, Parking Lot, and the Dump, without first marking signs of life on the sonar, did not produce either. In other words, we did not catch any bass without first marking at least one striper on the fish-finder.

When the bass are suspended in deep water, they mark very well on our color sonar unit, allowing us to distinguish solitary fish when cruising at around 10 knots. It's tough fishing out there right now for anyone not enjoying the luxury of a halfway decent color sonar system.

Race Point was also on the slow side. There were a few small keepers kicking around, yet the promise of just a few small bass make it hard to justify the run across the Bay.

Looking Forward to Next Week

If the weather cooperates, this coming week could feature much better fishing off Barnstable. I'd expect the nearshore haunts to still remain slow, as most bass have settled into their summertime routine of holding deep.

However the bass swim as they please and go where they want, so checking out places like Barnstable Harbor and the pot line off Sandy Neck could be worth your while.

Tubes and bunker spoons are a hot ticket item this time of the year. Leadcore line for the tubes and wire for the spoons is the typical protocol.

Keep an eye out for bass finning on the surface, if we get a glass calm day. Live eels or a needlefish plug have worked well in the past on these skittish and finicky bass.

The canal also produced well during Thursday morning's monsoon. Hitting the early morning tide with topwater plugs, and jigging after dark are surefire ways to increase your odds of tying into a healthy lineside this week.

How did you do fishing this past week?

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