Sunday, July 10th – Captain Don decided that he had run charters too many days in a row and needed a day off.  So he went to church and took his Grand-sons fishing at 9:30.  Great Day on the water.  His daughter Laura caught a few nice keepers, and Grand-son Jack (age 8  ) caught a few as well including his biggest fish to date – a 27.5 lb 45″ Striped-Bass. 

Could very well been our favorite trip of the season.

Well, Striper Fishing in the Bay has been outstanding.  Too tired to do a good job of updating the site regularly – but that’s a good thing.  We’ve been fishing nearly every day for the last month and a half, and Cape Cod Bay has treated our customers very, very well.  Will try to keep up with the pics and reports – check out our Facebook page as that is often easier and quicker to update.

Good luck out there.

Captain Don

June Striper fishing in Cape Cod Bay has been outstanding.  Save one afternoon trip with a nasty east wind, it has pretty well been limits and lots of releases on a daily basis.  We have been splitting our time fairly evenly between Billingsgate Shoal and Provincetown, as both areas are holding tremendous numbers of fish.  The middle of the bay has also been productive, as one afternoon we found acres of migrating Stripers on Top near the Fishing Ledge.  While most of our fishing has been trolling, we haven’t even had to break out the wire rigs once this year.  We’ve also seen far more surface feeding fish than usual, and have been able to break out the spinning gear on many occasions.  Monday, there were hoards of Bass on top,  and seemed like they were fighting each other for 9″ sluggos on top. 

There are no guarantees in fishing, but this is pretty darn nice right now..

Good luck,

-Captain Don

My caveat as always with these things – this is how I do it, there are lots of right ways, this is just what I’ve found to work well on the Laura-Jay.

First I spooled 2 Fin-Nor Santiago 50’s – these are the 50 standards, not the wides. Each reel took 450 yards of 130lb Jerry Brown Hollow core, this is connected via 7ft of chinese finger cuff spice to 100 yard top shots of Momoi Daimond 80lb line (Brillinat Blue). 130 JB is cheaper and easier to spice than the 80 and capacity isn’t an issue.

Next I spooled 2 Fin-Nor 50 Wides – I also spooled each of these with 450 yards of JB 130, but I put a significantly longer top-shot (approx 300 yds) of the 80 lb Diamond (Daimond significantly overtests, so I think of this as essentially 100lb mono). With the extra capacity, these are generally my long rigger rods – the standards have Plenty of capacity, but I like to put each rod in the same position in the spread each day.

Finally, I rigged my Kite Rod – this isn’t this line that controls the kite, rather a separate 50W combo used just for fishing the live bait. Braid flies much easier than mono (less wind resistance) – so I set up 1 50 Wide just for this.
I backed the reel with approx 400 yds of 80 lb Cortland Dacron, and then top-shoted the reel with 300 yards of JB 130lb braid (connected via loop to loop – with slices on each end). The terminal end of the line has a spliced loop where I can change short wind on leaders (30′) and then crimp on my hook for the bait.

I’ve got a couple more to do, but that was enough for 1 day.

Finally the picture is what I call the O Sh*t mark – I constantly hear stories of people “getting spooled” – but in reality it just doesn’t happen very often. Many anglers, (myself included) start getting nervous when they see the spool getting thin with a hot fish running off – but we normally have a heck of alot more capacity than we think.
So the Oh- Sh*t mark is simply a 6 foot section on line colored in with black sharpie – marked off 100 yards from the end of the spool. If you see this, time for some evasive maneuvers – but you still have room to save the day.

Hope that helped somebody getting ready for the season.

Captain Don launched the Laura-Jay on Saturday and the 2010 fishing season is officially underway.  We are rigging up this week, and then traveling up to Green Harbor for the first few weeks of Cod season.  First Cod Charter is Sunday the 18th with another group coming in for some Patriots day fishing on the 19th.  Should be a great start to the season, as our commercial friends that have been working the bank have been giving great reports of cod and haddock as well as huge schools of sandeels and an impressive early season whale show.

Looking forward to a great start to the 2010 season, and some tasty cod fillets.

Good luck out there,

Capt. Jay Cianciolo