“Nature and art — what could be more breathtaking?”
That’s an excerpt from the (rambling, mostly incoherent) liner notes on a 1990 Jane’s Addiction album. We stand on this sandbar, looking out to sea. It is a sea of infinity — it’s the whole planet, and it is mostly water.
I grew up on Lewis Bay and I always loved the idea — the notion, the dream — that as I looked out past the yacht club and the breakwater, that waterway, bracketed by Point Gammon, lead to the sea, and that same sea touched Ireland and Japan. It is one, singular sea. And it is full with uncountable life, most of it unseen by man.
Though we know there are mountains bigger than Everest down there, 95% of the seafloor remains a mystery to us. No one has ever seen a great white give birth. Man has been building boats for at least 10,000 years — a Pesse canoe, basically a hollowed out log, was found in Holland that dates to 8000 BC — but even today with computer-aided design and advanced materials, ships go down all the time.
The ocean corrodes, salt eats engines — the sun fades colors while it sunburns our skin. Why, indeed, should anyone go out there?
For one thing, the fish are pretty cool. This is the warmest time of year in local waters and with storms and wind wreaking havoc, all manner of strange sea life is vectoring through our waterways.
How about hammerhead sharks? Does anything show nature’s wild diversity more spectacularly? They’ve been spotted off Monomoy this week.
Richard Trifone was driving the boat when fellow Osterville Anglers Club members Art Hughes and David Brown hooked two bonito off Sandy Neck on Saturday. Bonito in the Bay? Almost unheard of. (Trifone added that he grilled the bones, skin-on, slathered in Italian dressing, tomatoes and lemons.)
I was swimming at Sandy Neck once and some banded rudderfish — colorful, playful little devils — began circling my legs. It was cute. Then I’d move over a few feet, and they’d come and find me, and resume swimming around my legs.
Guide Patrick Cassidy with Cape Cod on the Fly had a munificent multi-species week! He saw lots of blues (somewhat commonplace), bass (never a guarantee these days), and some black seabass taking flies at the surface (very unusual behavior) off Monomoy. To top it off he ran into a ray on the flats (freaky looking) and even had a flying fish break the surface and follow his boat for about 75-feet in Nantucket Sound (thrilling!).
Tom Hester once caught a guitarfish in Cape Cod Bay and said, “I didn’t know what it was, it looked like it was gonna start shooting darts or something.”
Mahi mahi and marlin are pushing ever closer to the shore and can sometimes be found not far off the Vineyard’s south coast. There were reports of triggerfish in southern Buzzards Bay this week — a fish more likely to be seen in Margaritaville than cold Cape waters.
Amiable Bob Lewis hooked a false albacore Wednesday morning in the Sound. Look at that skin! It’s a surrealist painter’s vivid dream of bright colors and impossible patterns.
Do you ever go swimming off the coast of Maine? It’s basically liquid ice (technically all water is, I just mean extremely cold). Yet they had their first-ever fatal shark attack this summer.
Great whites are a daily reality here, of course. Whites used to (seemingly) only exist in celluloid, in the movie “Jaws.” Then Shark Week was created on television, and then they actually showed up in our waters. Hundreds of great white sharks! Think about that. And yet we swim, and yet we fish, and yet we look out past the horizons of our known world.
So while considering the lobster, it’s time to ask…
What’s Going On?
1. Buzzards Bay/Cape Cod Canal. Red Top reports some bass at the west end with the east end “littered” with bonito. Some fluke (small though) off Mashnee Island. Lots of peanut bunker in Buzzards are holding groups of blues, Spanish mackerel and bonito. Red Top also reported a 20-pound albie was hooked and released this week, which, if true, means that angler tossed back a new Massachusetts record.
2. Islands. Dick’s Tackle reports solid, steady action on blues at the drawbridge and the so-called Jaws bridge. Shore fishing pretty slow, but they’re getting funny fish at Middle Ground. On Nantucket they’ve got bonito “boiling” in the harbors. Guide Cam Gammill thinks the Bonito Bar has lost some of its shape, causing the fish to move around more. “You can catch 10 at the Bonito Bar, but you never see them, or you can catch three breaking fish in the harbor and it’s a riot.”
3. Cape southside beaches and estuaries. Jim at Eastman’s in Falmouth said he motored from Waquoit to Cotuit and saw “no signs of life.” The bottom fish is pretty slow — except for scup. But the big news out here this week is albies. They aren’t think, likely wont be for a week or two, but they’re coming in and that gets a whole subculture of guys, many fly guys among them, who wait all year for these “lightning footballs,” as Steve Swains calls them, to come back.
4. Nantucket Sound. Decent action at Handkerchief. Fluke appalling, black seabass scarce. Some bass but “nothing to write home about” as one guy said. Lots of “short, stubby” peanut bunker around though and that’s good for all manner of gamefish.
5. The Great Backside Beach. Honestly, didn’t hear much out this way, except those [expletive deleted] hammerhead sharks!
6. Cape Cod Bay. Brewster flats holding fish. Bonito near shore “up and down the beach” off Sandy Neck. Some bass in the mix, but no big fish, despite the recent moon tides. Did you know that the August full moon is frequently called the Full Sturgeon moon, for the ease with which these dinosaur-looking fish were most readily biting? Elsewhere it’s called the Full Green Corn moon (presumably in Iowa and Nebraska), sometimes the Wheat Cut moon, or in Maine, they say Blueberry moon, as those little sweet treats peak. It’s all about perspective. We all live in the same world, we just see it differently.
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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