By Striper Mike, Sports Port Pro Staff
The Cape Cod fall migration of striped bass and bluefish is world renown and anglers from all over try their best to catch some of these beautiful species as they move south across and through Cape Cod’s many beaches and Canal.
Jim's 33 inch bass
It was my good fortune this past week to spend some time and fish with Cape Cod’s Jim Kelly. Jim has many friends within the Cape’s fishing community and was kind enough to introduce me to some of them during this past week. Jim is the quintessential Cape Cod Striped bass and Bluefish fisherman and for his talents and skills as a fisherman we are designating him “Angler of the week”.
Jim is an avid Cape Cod Canal angler but started this past week fishing the beaches of Cape Cod Bay and had a spectacular day catching an amazing 50 striped bass. Instead of hiding this incredible day, he invited me to join him the following morning to see if we could do it again. Sure enough we added 21 more striped bass to the total. We caught all these bass on top water plugs and this is a fun and enjoyable way to catch these beautiful fish. We caught bass up to 28 inches and was another tremendous and memorable morning of fishing. These two days of fishing exemplify the Cape Cod fall run, when the bait and birds gather around the beaches the bass find them and feed in big numbers and you can catch huge quantities of bass in just one location. A real “hit of miss” adventure, there is plenty of “empty” water out there, but find the right spots and you can experience the best fishing of your life.
The author with a striped bass
As if this wasn’t good enough Jim invited me to fish with him and some of his “buddies” at the Cape Cod Canal. The morning started slowly with Jim catching a small striped bass but then the day exploded with an incredible number of very large gator bluefish definitely on the feed. With the average bluefish approaching 30 inches this was going to be a career, once in a lifetime day. Jim had just shown me his jigging technique and it was put to use immediately as 12 of us continued to hook into these truck pulling bluefish.
Jim’s 35 inch bluefish
Add a 4 knot current to this and we were in a tremendous fishing battle that would go on for the next 2 hours. With huge bluefish seemingly everywhere we experienced fishing “mayhem” but were enjoying every minute of it. Experiencing all this fishing action with so many accomplished and skilled anglers was a sight in itself. A well oiled machine of motion to catch and unhook these very toothy creatures. Finally, the bluefish blitz ended and once again the waters returned to peace and serenity.
Jim Kelly, Angler of the week, thank you!
The author with Jim and their gator blues!