With Labor Day upon us, many of us will start to see our boating opportunities slowly narrow. Between work and school (sort of), shorter days, cooling air and hurricane watches, this time of year is on the wane for the boating crowd.
Like anybody, I like a good bargain, so I was lured to Provincetown years ago by that siren song: Free Boat.
Artist and erstwhile fly guide Steve Swain says, “I know there’s no such thing as a free boat.” Craig LeBlanc owns Allen Harbor Marine in Harwich and says, “They are always disasters so I stay away from them!”
So I get to the address. A scary compound, away from town, Manson-like in its creepiness.
No one around, but I felt eyes on me. I checked the boat out, she looked fast — a sleek sled with a stern hung rudder. Still, no one around.
Dilapidated shacks. Broken things. A shopping cart. I was starting to wish I had kept the car running and pointed towards the street in case I needed to make a run for it. Then a horse walked through the scene, apropos of nothing.
Finally, I knocked on a door. The woman who answered looked a little dazed and confused. She was wearing only a carpet. I said that I was sorry to bother her, but did she know anything about this boat? And then — as the Irish say: This is no word of a lie — she said, “What boat?”
What boat? This one. This 25-foot bright red sailboat perched on stands 10 feet from your front door. That thing that blocks out the sun? That.
I didn’t take the boat and got the heck out of there. This got me thinking about some of the boats that passed through my hands on the way to the junkyard. I’ve been on yachts, sportfishers, swanky houseboats — but I was a guest. What I can own is (cruelly) limited by my (paltry) income.
The Cape’s Worst Boat wasn’t technically free — I traded a 12-pack of beer for her — but she got me out on Lewis Bay, chasing those too-far-to-cast-from-shore fish that drive you crazy. The CWB only sank once, but leaked always.
A metal jon boat, she once got run over by a truck and then “fixed” with a hammer. She leaked in scores of places — deck rivets that had worked loose — but was surprising seaworthy. Or, bayworthy, I guess. Beachworthy. If I ever took her on the sea I wouldn’t be here to write these words.
I had a Sailfish that I got for $100 cash and some snow cones and Chaco Tacos from the ice cream truck that I drove to look at her in. (All the top yacht brokers, they always arrive in garishly lit clown trucks, right?) This proud craft got me out on the Lewis Bay, where I narrowly avoided the Eagle car ferry after an unfortunate series of misfortunes necessitated the most pressure-packed gybe imaginable to avoid a crunching collision.
I had a nice yacht club tender for a while. That got run over by a UPS truck. I had a Laser I got for $40. She took on water on a lake and was never the same.
And once, on or about Labor Day, I picked up a roadside freebie Sunfish. The rig (almost literally) exploded during the shakedown cruise — one second it was a sail, the next just a series of furiously flapping ribbons — and I had to push-swim her to shore, where I summarily abandoned her. But not before I took a stick and left an epithet in the smooth, low tide sand. FREE BOAT.
So while a Kennedy loses a race in Massachusetts for the first time, it’s time to ask…
What’s Going On?
1. Buzzards Bay/Cape Cod Canal. The bass in the canal are on the smaller side this week — mostly schoolies. But they have sporadic bonito action in the ditch. Out in Buzzards guys were run-and-gun albie fishing with many blues mixed in underneath. Small metals and epoxy jigs working best.
2. Islands. Dick’s Bait reports good numbers of albies at State Beach and a few at Chappy. One crew was plugging from shore and hooked one keeper and a few schoolie bass. Bass around if you’re willing to “work the rock piles.” They are also “invaded” with peanut bunker, which should hold those funny fish. Nantucket has fish all over — blues, bones, bass, albies. Bill Fisher Tackle reports the harbor is “blowing up every morning.”
3. Cape southside beaches and estuaries. Jim from Eastman’s was out on his boat Monday. He said there were about 25 boats off Nobska and small pods of albies (like eight fish pods) would surface, there would be a flurry of activity for about five seconds until the fish dove again. Twenty-five boats and he witnessed zero hookups. Elsewhere, Bass River has good amounts of schoolies to about 24-inches inside the river this week with funny fish off the mouth. Craigville has the most consistent funny fish with albies as well as Spanish mackerel in the mix. Scup everywhere, “but that’s normal,” as one guy said. Sports Port weighed a pufferfish for a little kid and his proud dad.
4. Nantucket Sound. Some blues at Horseshoe. A few bass around, but on the small side. Black seabass is starting to pick up again, but that season closes Sept. 8. Fluke moderate, but mostly shorts.
5. The Great Backside Beach. I spoke to captain Russ with Liveliner Sportfishing out of Chatham. He said he’s been doing well on bass on the troll in 20- to 50-feet of water. Blues up and down Monomoy and lots of dolphins and whales around, too. Elsewhere, they’re getting bass from the beach around Eastham and Wellfleet at first light with many blues mixed in.
6. Cape Cod Bay. Race Point has been doing well, especially at sunset, the past three days. Bass on the edges of shoal water, like Billingsgate. Solid bonito action down around Sesuit. Steady tuna bite in the Bay this week, too, just like the old days.
Freshwater. As they said at Sports Port, “less bass and more pickerel.” With the cooling waters, trout should start to get more active.
Catch em up!
Information for this column was assembled from a variety of liars, exaggerators, mis-informants, ne’erdo-wells and roustabouts. In other words, from fishermen.
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