10/4-10/6: Fall Mixed-Bag Action

By tomconley

Today’s and yesterday’s trips (Wed & Thurs)  were blown out due to weather, but patrons aboard the Yankee Clipper with Josh at the wheel enjoyed some good action on a variety of groundfish on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.

10/4: The fishing in the morning on Monday’s trip produced a steady pick of keeper codfish and a handful of haddock, but the dogfish were pretty tough and at around 11:00 Josh elected to make a substantial shift. They ended the day with a good anchor stop, sitting there for two hours. During that time, they picked away at cod ranging from shorts to a 25-pound steaker, haddock, cusk, and a pile of wolfish. All told, seven wolfish came into the boat, four of which were over 20 pounds, with the largest tipping the scales at 24 pounds! But they were edged out by the aforementioned codfish for pool honors. Josh called the day fair to good overall, with fair fishing in the morning and a good bite on that last anchor stop in the afternoon.

10/5: Fishing on Monday was good overall, Capt. Josh reported. They sat on the first anchor stop for an hour, enjoying a steady pick on cod, cusk, haddock, and a handful of white hake including a burly, surly 30-pounder that took the pool. The next stop, also lasting about an hour, was even better, a very good pick on haddock with some solid flurries during which anywhere from a dozen to fifteen haddock would come up at once. Some market cod to about 14 pounds were mixed in too. They finished the day with a couple of anchor stops that weren’t quite as good as those in the morning but which produced a bunch of cod, cusk, and haddock.

10/6: Tuesday’s fishing wasn’t quite as fast-paced as Monday, a fair to good day overall. They picked away on the anchor at haddock, cusk, and cod, with a good flurry on cod and haddock occurring around the tide change at 11:30. Other than that, however, the fish didn’t really seem to be in a biting mood, and they ground away all day, with a couple of fish coming up at all times. A 10-pound cod won the pool.

Willy