Massachusetts 2011

[MuskieBait]

Sorry guys…I’m sick and it’s been busy catching up on work…so this will be a very brief picture report…I guess that’s a nice change for once…

Here is the fishing first.

Fishing was okay…not spectacular and pretty species poor. If it was just a couple of weeks earlier, it may have been better. I only had a total of 16 hours of fishing time (not including boat travel time) so I guess the results was not too bad. There may have been better chances for Little Tunny from shore and more of a Haddock bite on the boat. It was a transition time so the Cod was winding down and the Pollock has not arrived in good number yet. But the Tautog were there and they were hungry even though I didn’t have any green crabs for bait.

Oct 10, 2011 – Yankee Fleet full day, Gloucester

Boat rental rod: 7', 30-50 class conventional rod stiff enough to fish a 20oz weight, a rusty and jerky 4/0 Penn Senator filled with 50lb mono and frozen clam bait, fished on dropper loop with a 5/0 circle hook about 12" from the sinker

We fished the Stellwegan Bank about 20 miles offshore in 220 to 265 feet of water! That's a long way to crank on a jerky 4/0 Penn Senator!

**Fishing 50lb mono and a stiff rod in 200+ feet of water sucks. Bite detection is basically nil for a newbie to fishing this deep and this heavy! :evil:

Tusk…locally called cusk (Brosme brosme) Species #202



Also caught a Picked Dogfish which the deckhand shook off before I can take a picture

New fishing friend who is a proton accelerator senior technician at Mevion



Oct 11, 2011 – Woods Hole Stone Pier

Two rigs:

Rig #1: 7', 30-50lb rated, 1-3oz casting range, 3-piece travel boat rod from TFO, Shimano Cardiff 301 with 50lb Sufix braid, 6 feet of 40lb rub leader tied as dropper loop, 6" of 40lb hook leader to a #8 baitholder hook and a 3oz bank sinker. I fished this rig on bottom or near the stone pier with live sandworms.

Rig #2: 9', 10-25lb rated, 3/4-2.5oz casting range, 4-piece travel spinning rod from TFO, Pflueger Solara 4035 with 30lb Sufix braid, 4 feet of 15lb mono leader tied to a 1oz Kastmaster.

Bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix) A little 2lb snapper blue during a blitz on a 1oz Kastmaster!!!

**Casting to baitfish flying out of the water was way cool!!!



Little Tunny aka False Albacore (Euthynnus alletteratus) I actually saw a small blitz out of casting range…apparently we were a couple of days too late…one casualty of the action…



Switched to live sandworms

Scup (Stenotomus chrysops) Caught a number of small ones…they were out of season



Cunner (Tautogolabrus adspersus) Species #203…caught too many of these



Tautog (Tautoga onitis) Species #204…my top shore fishing target and I caught at least 8 of them!

**People say tautog bites are hard to detect...not so for me. They actually clamp down on bait pretty hard. People also say tautog's bony mouths are hard to hook...but I would say all the bites I suspected as a tautog hit I had hooked and landed all of them. I was using a #8 baitholder hook...while most people suggest using larger #2 to 1/0 hooks when fishing green crabs. Maybe the larger hooks are harder for the fish to take in...and the way the crabs are rigged on the hooks meant the hooks are pointed outward and sideways, making hooking the tautog much harder. If you want tautogs, you need to fish way tight to rocks!!!





Stone Pier



Oct 22, 2011 - Yankee Fleet full day, Gloucester

We fished Stellwegan Bank from 220 to 270 feet of water!

Boat rental rod: 7', 30-50 class conventional rod stiff enough to fish a 20oz weight,

My own Daiwa Saltist BG40 filled with 65lb Sufix briad with about 200 feet of 40lb Berkley Big Game mono

Frozen clam bait, fished on dropper loop with a 5/0 circle hook about 12" from the sinker.

**Switching the boat rental jerky, slow 4/0 Penn Senator with 50lb mono to a smooth, 6.4:1 Saltist with 40lb mono and even a little bit of braid fished made a big difference. It took much less time cranking up the rig to change out bait, and the lighter mono + the little bit of braid fished allowed for much better bite detection! If you ever decide to do this, I would recommend even fishing only a 50 feet mono top shot and run braid the rest of it (to please the captain and mates...because tangles are often guaranteed when dogfish are around). If I had used my Saltist on the first trip on Oct 10, maybe I would have caught a few more fish!

**I also learned that keeping the rig on bottom at ALL times increase the number of bites. This is pretty intuitive really, but the captains and mates told everyone to drop the rig to the bottom and then take 4-5 cranks up. I did this on the first trip and the first drift of the second trip. Yeah...the sinker would bounce on bottom occasionally, but it is NOT on bottom! Most of the bites came on bottom for me...and after a while, I decided to ignore what the captain and mates suggested...and made sure my sinker is always on bottom AND NOT BOUNCING! Somehow, I get more bites by doing this. The boat would rock and roll...but I used my rod to adjust to the change in height...point it down as the boat rolled up, and pulling it up at an angle to the side as the boat lowers. This let me keep the sinker on bottom but I still had a tight line to detect even the quickest bite...which got me way more bites and a few more fish than the first trip!

Picked Dogfish (Squalus acanthias) Species #205…these guys get annoying after a while! They twist and circle after getting hook and often tangle up multiple lines. At one point we had a whole school of them under the boat and we had the whole boat in tangles…took an hour to sort that out!



Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua) Species #206…my top deep water target! Finally got three on my second boat trip! Two were short…and the only keeper I got was not gaffed in time because the deckhands were too busy untangling line!

One inch short!



Two inches short…


And some parts of Boston, Gloucester and Woods Hole through my eyes…

Oct 9, 2011 - Boston

After a bit of luggage delay scare I was finally dropped off the luggage at South Station for temporary storage. It was about 12pm when I started my Boston half-day tour.

Museum of Fine Arts





Old South Church tower



Boston Public Library



Now the start of the Freedom Trail

Park Street Church



Massachusetts State House



Museum of African-American History



Beacon Hill neighbourhood



Paul Revere Burial



Franklin at Old City Hall



Old State House



Faneuil Hall



Quincy Market



Lobster roll and clam chowder



Exchange of the keys



Traffic Tunnel Administration Building and a commemoration of Boston’s mayor



Tudor Wharf (Boston Harbour)



USS Constitution



Bunker Hill Monument



William Prescott



294 steep steps up Bunker Hill Monument…



…to an original cannon and the view that troops saw





Totally tired after walking the Freedom Trail in 3 hours



Other pictures…

Oct 10, 2011 - Gloucester

Gloucester Harbour morning



Gloucester Harbour evening



Low tide



Oct 12 – 21, 2011 – Woods Hole Optical Microscopy Course

Everyday started at 8:30am and most days ended at 11pm at the earliest…with one day we were in the lab working on a problem set until 3:30am. It was an intense course…but as you will see in the pictures, we also had a lot of fun drinking and otherwise.

Beer central



Party time!







Free afternoon at Martha’s Vineyard

Vineyard’s Haven, Martha’s Vineyard



Biking around Martha’s Vineyard



Beach, Martha’s Vineyard…looks soooo fishy!!!



Lobster dinner



My crew



My roommate Andrew’s birthday and his “Facebook Wall” we drew for him…because he hates getting birthday wishes on Facebook LOL



Totally overworked and partied out





Just some Woods Hole scenery







Eel Pond



Gallery by the drawbridge



It was a great trip! I learned a lot at the microscopy course, I met a bunch of great fellow students, instructors and commercial reps that offers me a great network and I even managed to catch some fish!

I’ll be visiting MA in the future again…there are still some fish that needs to be caught!!!

[OldTimer]

(10-17-2012 08:24 PM)MuskieBait Wrote:  Bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix) A little 2lb snapper blue during a blitz on a 1oz Kastmaster!!!

**Casting to baitfish flying out of the water was way cool!!!

Great Report........... this pic above has got me really wanting to get south! Love bluefish when they come in thick.

[MuskieBait]

Yeah, I love a good bluefish blitz too!