Report from this past week:

By Tom O

Hi all,

Sorry for the recent lag in reporting—I’ve been very busy with my fellowship down in Woods Hole and haven’t had a chance to write recently. For the duration of the summer, I think I’ll be putting up reports once or perhaps twice a week, or maybe more often if some really exciting stuff is going on.

Since last Thursday’s trip, the fishing has been up and down. For the most part, Captains Josh, Kirk and Dave have been steaming two or more hours offshore to some deeper bottom, where haddock on bait constitute the majority of landings. However, for those who know how to swing a jig there have been some nice market cod in the vicinity as well, especially if conditions allow the boat to drift and cover more bottom. In short, if you want to put meat in the bag, especially haddock and cusk, bait’s the right choice. But if you’re more interested in catching some better quality fish—8-15-pound cod (or larger?) and perhaps a smattering of pollock—it sounds like jigs are the way to go. Here’s a brief synopsis of the past week:

Friday, 6/12: Capt. Josh reports a good day of fishing with a light load of anglers aboard the Yankee Clipper. The haddock bite was strong, and bait fishermen as well as jiggers did some damage on the silver ones, many of which were over 5 pounds. Some cod and cusk were in the mix as well, although not many.

Saturday, 6/13 was a slow day all around. All three boats were out, and nobody had much to report! Sounds like the groundfishing fleet as a whole experienced a poor biting day today. Kyle Gorman of Woburn won the pool aboard the Yankee Freedom with a 16-pound wolffish, while Chris Brown of Gloucester won the Patriot’s pool with a 12-pound wolfie. No pool aboard the Clipper, which had a charter.

6/14: I was on board the Yankee Clipper today with Capt. Josh running the show. Unfortunately, the fishing was pretty slow once again—just a grinding pick on haddock in the deeper water while on the anchor. There were some nice codfish down there though, as well as a few pollock, and the jiggers snapped up a few of each. I managed three market cod to 15 pounds plus a handful of haddock. Gina Hart of Gloucester jigged up a 12-pound pollock to take pool honors, narrowly defeating an 11.5-pound cod captured by one Mike Abovsky.

6/15-16: Captain Josh reports good fishing on both Monday and Tuesday aboard the Yankee Clipper. Both days witnessed a strong haddock bite for the light load of anglers, both on the anchor and while drifting. Those who worked the jigs caught a lot of codfish, some of which were shorts but many of which were keepers ranging from barely-24-inchers to 14-16-pounders, with a good number in the 8-12-pound range. Josh mentioned that most proficient jig fishermen would likely have been able to easily limit out on cod on both days. Nothin’ wrong with that!

To conclude, the fishing the past week has been a bit inconsistent, with a slow weekend but good catching the last two days. Hopefully the next few days bring more of the latter!