The Moeller’s had a clan gathering on Cape Cod and twenty-three showed up. It was a chore to arrange for a fishing trip for the group because a fishing charter only can handle six at a time. So we arranged for three charters to accommodate everyone who wanted to fish. We chose early in the week so we would have fish to grill during the stay.
Fishing the right tide was important and this meant we needed to leave the dock at 5:00 AM. For me to make that timing, I needed to get up at 3:45 AM. When I have an early wake up time, I usually sleep fitfully and this was no exception. I went to bed at 8:30 and got as much sleep as I could. Everyone were troopers and we got to the boats by 5:00 AM and fished the early tide.
We fished just off Monomoy Island in the tide rips where the bait fish were running. The weather was beautiful. The sea state was calm, two to four feet. We could fish up to three people at a time doing a slow troll in the rip. We fished both flies and top water lures. It was exhilarating when you got a bite.
Everyone who fished, caught a fish. You could only keep one fish per person and it had to be between 28 and 32 inches. We released anything larger than 32 and smaller than 28. We released all the fish after we caught our limit. We did catch a few blue fish and kept two for people to try. The captain filleted the fish we kept. Meg wanted to see their stomach contents to see what they were feedig on, squid.
Meg also checked the fish for tongue lice. She says she has never seen one in the wild. None of the fish we caught had any.
Meg did catch a black sea bass. We kept it as it is considered a delicacy and served it as an appetizer.
There were seal colonies on Monomoy Island and the seals attract great white sharks. There have been over eight hundred shark sightings over the past three years but we did not encounter any.
We all really enjoyed the fishing trips and we now have a years worth of striped bass in our freezer.
Mark, Wink, Meg and Crew
SO MANY GOOD MEMORIES!!!!!!!
Great blog!