| Over the past two weeks the fishing up at the Merrimack and along the Cape Ann coast remained fair to good. The numbers and size of stripers this season is off as compared to the last few seasons. Captain Al M. reports the Merrimack still has good numbers, but no keeper size fish on the fly. I have chartered and fished several days over the past two weeks and have boated only two keeper sized fish. By all reports that have come my way, the story is the same, small fish, few big fish. The commercial anglers are getting very few 36” plus fish, at least in the Cape Ann area. The dogfish are plentiful and getting a chunk of herring down to a large striper is most challenging. The tuna hunters are reporting lots of large stripers and bluefish out on Stellwagon. The bait is plentiful out there and as such, the stripers will remain well offshore. Local lobstermen have reported seeing football tuna just off Halibut point, about 2 miles or so. Steve P. has been experiencing similar low numbers and small stripers from the surf. Porter B. reports similar success over on the Annisquam and Cranes beach areas. The common denominator in this equation appears to be the lack of inshore baitfish. The two keepers that I released had very slim bellies, probably from the lack of a sizable food source.  Unless something changes in the weather and wind pattern or the tuna drive the bait inshore, I do not expect the fishing to improve very much. You will have to fish hard to boat a dozen or more schoolies right now (on light tackle). You may catch a few more fish if you’re chumming and chunking, but that’s not a lot of fun. Best bet for the few inshore big fish is probably fishing live Pollack or macks if you can find them.   |
| Captain Skip Montello |