Fishing The Vineyard Report 8/14/08

The name of the game for team Fishing the Vineyard has been bass and blues over the past week. The bonito situation to this point in the season has been disappointing to say the least. They remain out over the shoal water in scant numbers mostly mixed with blues which can be a frustrating situation.

The bass fishing however has remained excellent, with some fast action for this time of year. These fish are not huge, but there are plenty of them with a solid number of keepers (they’re called keepers but we let them go, for posterity) in the mix. The bass are currently on a couple of different kinds of bait including tiny squid, sandeels and juvenile butterfish.

Captain W. Brice Contessa
www.fishingthevineyard.com

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Here's a couple more from this week

Fishing The Vineyard Report 8/6/08

The story from team Fishing the Vineyard right now is sight casting for striped bass and blind casting for green bonito.

Fishing on the flats has been strong with a great deal of bass in a wide range of sizes available to sight casters on the island flats in the past week. Hot flies on the flats have been almost exclusively crab imitations, with lighter colors excelling over the sandy bottoms that are holding fish at the moment.

The bonito scene is the same as it has been; blind casting on shoals and rips but no fish jumping inshore. The fishing has improved though, where as last week we were picking away at a few mixed in with a lot of blues this week we’ve seen stronger bonito fishing with some spots holding far more bones than blues at certain stages of the tide. Needless to say we’d rather be fishing for them busting along the beach, but for now the blind blitz will have to do.

Fishing the Vineyard Report 7/31

Fishing on the Vineyard is strong at the current juncture. As it stands now, there are bass, bluefish and bonito available to fly and spin fishers alike. Bass fishing right now is subject to a great deal of pressure as a result of the commercial season. The constant presence of the local and out of town fleet employing every method under the sun for killing bass make it a wee bit difficult to target them via fly and light spin. The best bet for anglers that fish like we do at this point is on the flats, along certain stretches of shallow shoreline, and over rocky shallow reefs. All of these locations fish well for us at this time of year because they are away from the commercial fleet.

Blues are thick throughout both Vineyard and Nantucket sounds. They're are great numbers of them on the shoals and outside of the inlets and harbors under the birds. The ones inshore are smallish, typical of this time in the summer. The ones on the shoal water are larger with fish to 10 pounds a occurring regularly this season. No one should poo-poo bluefish, they save the day often at this time of year.

Bonito are now available in target able amounts. They are not jumping along the beach fronts too much at the moment but certain shoals and rips are holding good numbers of bones now and if you know how to get there you may or may not be rewarded with green gold. I don't think it will be long before they fill in to their usual inshore haunts and begin to leap gleefully.

There are some tuna south of the Vineyard. I haven't been myself, but I'm getting mixed reviews from those who have. Some are reporting bent rods and bloody decks, others hours on hours of endless searching with nothing to show for it. Robby talked to one dude who caught a cod and a mahi in the same spot. That's a pretty cool mixed bag if you ask me

7.22.08: Bones and Blues

The water surrounding the Rock is smokin' hot these days. East side water temps up to 78 degrees have forced us to change gears in the last couple weeks. Topwater bluefishing has been a blast with tons of fish up to 10-pounds on both tides. 1-2" squid have begun flushing through various rips in Nantucket and Vineyard Sounds. If you find the right edge it's non-stop bent rods. My client this morning put the first 2 bonito of the year on the deck of my boat - a matching pair of fat 7-pounders. It was a great start to what will hopefully be an action-packed late summer season...

Capt. Tom Rapone
http://www.highlymigratoryfishing.com