| I fished all through Saturday afternoon and into the night chumming and chunking and caught about 35 bass, 1of which was a 31 inch keeper in the Annisquam River. Still no big fish around for me, but one of my commercial bass friends told me that some large fish are being taken up off Seabrook; in the 40 pound range. Over the past week, I got out on the waters around Cape Ann and fished flies with a charter client John D. from upstate NY and with my brother Capt. Al. I am pleased to report that solid numbers of stripers have taken up residence along the rocky shoreline and out in the shallows around Milk Island. My client John had a great time casting flies to stripers and catching about a dozen nice fish up to 27 inches. These were his first ever stripers on the fly!  Last Saturday morning, Captain Al and I set out and fished Straitsmouth Island and down along the shore to Long Beach. We found stripers just about every place we stopped and fished. Most of the stripers were in the mid 20 inch range, some covered in sea lice (a good sign this time of year) and were all solid healthy fish. We found several medium sized pods of fish working small silver sides and slurping crustacean larvae at the waters surface. The stripers were mostly aggressive with tide current running but slacked at dead tide. We kept an eye out for bluefish but did not find any. Water temperatures that have been running in the mid 60’s most all of last week, dropped to about 60 over this past w/e. Captain Allan Smith has returned form Costa Rica and is getting his boat ready. We hope to get offshore this week and look for football tuna. They should be arriving in our near offshore waters anytime now. We will keep you up to date. |
| Captain Skip Montello |