Barnstable Harbor 8-4-2012

Met up with my friend Val Saturday morning down on Cape Cod, to fish Barnstable Harbor for some schoolies. I had a friend from work along with me that had never sat in a kayak before or had fished for stripers. Luckily Scott is a seasoned steelhead angler from the Pacific Northwest so it didn’t take long for him to pick it up. Armed with med weight fresh water gear and Val with her flyrod, we launched shortly after 5:00 and were quickly into the blues. The bite would be consistent for the next few hours until the tide finished going out and went slack.

For his first kayak trip I choose to put Scott in the Big Tuna to help inspire some confidence. I think it worked because about half an hour after launching Scott had his first schoolie in the kayak. He ended the day with 3 stripers and more blues then anyone was going to count. At times we were we were catching them on back to back to back casts.

Right around the slack tide my kayak started to feel odd, in the rush to prep 2 kayaks and all the gear to launch I had forgotten to put my drain plug all the way in. I went over to a sand bar and had to bail the 6” of water that was filling it up. We all took a break on the bar and relaxed for a while until the tide turned and started to roll in. There we met up with Jack, who was paddling a Cuda he recently got. The fishing picked up soon after that and the bite was pretty consistent the rest of the day.

Val took a break from her kayak and waded a sandbar for a while, beating up on the blues with her fly rod. As she would put it “This is in essence, a picture of pure happiness”

Val ended up with the biggest striper of the day right when we decided to head back to the launch.

It was a great day to be on the water in a beautiful place, I’m glad I finally got down there. We were consistently catching fish for over 7 hours. I had a great day as well with a couple of dozen blues up to 20” and 4 stripers to 18” and one larger striper that took advantage of a frayed main line, it was hard to watch the line unwind about a foot above my leader, 10’ in front of my kayak, knowing there was nothing I could do. Plus with all the catching going it gave me time to take a few breaks and shoot some pictures.

Gregg Crisp
“Hammerhead”