Tuesday, May 21, 2013

A Day in Buzzards Bay

We mixed it up a bit today.  Based on past logs, this was a good time to hit Buzzards Bay by boat for a variety of fish so that's where we decided to fish. The move to this area proved to be a good one.  Our main goal was to fish for black sea bass.  We began hitting some of our past hotspots that were marked on the GPS.  We initially picked up a few keepers on bucktail jigs along with several large scup, but the action was on the slow side.  So, we headed off in search of stripers and bluefish.  Along one point we found a bunch of terns diving and fish breaking.  It was all bluefish feeding on a mass of small sandeels.  We caught the blues on poppers and bucktail jigs.  They went from 5 lbs. up to a large one of 10-11 lbs. that Steve caught (see photo).  This proved to be almost non-stop action and we were the only boaters fishing for them. When we got sick of catching blues, we headed back to our original spot to try again for black sea bass.  And, they were there in good numbers.  We landed two or three on just about every drift by bouncing 3/4 oz flathead bucktail jigs that were spiced with 4 inch white, triple ripple plastic curly tails.  All the sea bass we caught were keepers in the 14-16 inch range (see photo).  There were no real big ones, but no small ones either.
Buzzards Bay is one of those spots that offers a lot of variety at this time of year and a lot of fish. It's really a short drive from RI and is well worth the effort. The place is loaded with black sea bass, large scup, bluefish and stripers.