Greetings from Capt. Dave & Baymen Guide Service, Inc!

On board today, repeat client, Don Savory, and his friends Tom & Dave. I guided Don and his three boys a few seasons back and we landed 70 fish that morning!

At first light, a dead-calm bay and high tide, and thick fog over much of the bay. And lots of striped bass busting bait on topwater in 73 degree waters. Shocking for early August. In September we expect this, but in the dog-days of summer – never. We did well on some nice-sub-legal striped bass on rubber crank baits. Fast moving fish chasing a small, olive, slender minnow of about 1″ long. This “blitz” eventually slowed up and then stopped so we moved on to spot #2 of the morning.

Next up, we found a small school of bass in shallow waters. As we started to head for them, I spotted birds working in another one of my spots about a half-mile away. We headed right for them and joined several other boats also working the fish. There was nice fog cover and the bass were not very spooky. However, we would soon learn that the entire school of fish were all imprinted on a 1″ slender olive minnow and it was VERY hard to get any strikes. Some how, Don figured out the technique and he was high rod and began to land fish. It was a lot of work. I literally went through my tackle and tried just about everything I had in my bag of tricks to get these fish to take our tackle. Very, very challenging! I even cut down a rubber crank bait the same size and profile of the minnows swimming by the boat, but it was no use. Too much bait in the water and almost every bass was imprinted to not eat anything but the slender minnows. All this said, we did land several fish before moving on to new water. It was so cool to see these fish feeding like this on topwater in early August.

Next spot of the morning yielded a couple bumps but no hook-ups. Onward to another spot in the bay to fish a deep hole, where I marked a big GW a few seasons back. BINGO! Tom hooks into a big fish at the edge of a drop-off and we all knew this was a fine keeper.  Heavy fish. That fish swung from the back of the boat, along the rim of the deep hole, and then swung to the port side. And then, slack…. It somehow threw the hook. Heartbreaker! But that’s fishing.

On to our last spot of the morning. Another hole with a small rip set up along it’s edge of. A couple bumps in the hole and then Don hooked into our last fish of the morning in the rip.

Total catch and release today was 27 striped bass, all on rubber crankbaits. Not bad for the dog-days of a streamy, hot, August morning on the bay! ALSO – A school of medium size blues were running with some of the bass today. First blues I have seen this season inside the bay.

Back at it. STAY POSTED:

Capt. David Bitters, BAYMEN, www.baymenlife.com 30 Years Guiding The Bay. Fly Fishing & Light Tackle Striped Bass on the Massachusetts Coast.

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