Saturday morning was spent chasing schoolies around Buzzards Bay in my kayak. The early morning was calm and the water mirror-like. My usual spots had been producing well recently and I was optimistic that it would be a good morning. Trolling my fly and a small paddle tail jig produced only two micro schoolies; not the production rate I was expecting. Reports from other anglers on shore and other boats did nothing to raise my hopes. I decided to leave the small bay and head out to larger water.
Leaving the bay only accomplished one thing for me. It gave me the chance to notice just how much the wind picked up. I hadn’t noticed since I was heading in the same direction as the northwest wind. Once I was out in the bigger water and trying to fish it became very evident that a) it was going to be near impossible to do anything but troll around and fight the wind and current and; b) the paddle back was going to suck. With these realizations in mind, my old man and I decided to turn back and make our way towards the launch, fishing as we go. The return trip provided my father with his nicest fish of the morning at about 24”. I picked up some nicer fish in the 20-22 inch class as we got further back in the bay to close out the morning. Discussion over some post fish beers on the patio revolved around where some larger fish might be residing. With the current restrictions in place, Rhode Island was out of the question. A friend has been trying to convince us to check out the Taunton River down in Fall River for a while now. The weather and tide forecasted for today, Sunday, both looked promising and the plan was solidified.
Meeting at the Bicentennial Park launch at 5:30 am, once again we were confronted by glassy water. My father and I launched and left our friend Bruce to catch up with us shortly. We were immediately out of our normal element. Within a few hundred yards of the ramp and we were in 40 ft of water. Combined with the urban surroundings, we were definitely not on the Cape anymore.
What seemed like promising conditions gave us false hope of a morning spent chasing pods if breaking fish. Instead we searched, and searched, and searched for any signs of life, only to find nothing. We made our way upstream, trolling and blind casting. I spent a while jigging the bottom but I was blind. Since my own kayak has developed some cracks, I have been using a loaner boat and don’t have my depth finder hooked up.
Our efforts proved fruitless. The morning seemed like it was going to be a wash. None of us had so much as a sniff. As we paddled under a couple bridges though, we saw the shining beacon of hope. Guys both on shore and in boats were catching tautogs hand over fist. We pulled up on shore to take a break and come up with plan.
My plan was to fish for tog. I’ve been dying to catch one and since the stripes weren’t showing this seemed like a way to save the morning. 10 minutes of flipping rocks on the beach provided a half decent supply of green crabs. They were small but I had nothing to lose. I scrounged up a jig head that seemed like it would work and paddled over to the bridge abutment. With my limited jigging abilities I dropped my bait down and kept it about a foot off the bottom. Again, no depth finder so I don’t know what depth we were working in but if I had to guess I would say about 20-30 ft. Without. 5 minutes I had pulled my first short tog onto the boat.
10 minutes later and the old man had a keeper in the boat. I followed suite and quickly brought my own keeper in. Suddenly the day was looking up. We quickly went to shore and restocked our crab supply now that our method seemed sound. Another hour was spent afterwards jigging. We only pulled up another keeper each but plenty of shorts were brought to the boats.
At this point, the crabs were gone again, the tide was turning and the wind was picking up. Bruce had pedaled his way about another mile up river and had actually found a handful of schoolies in the mid 20” class. Knowing if we paddled our way up there it would be a long haul back into the wind, the old man and I decided to call it and head towards the ramp with Bruce following shortly.
The morning wasn’t what I expected. I certainly wasn’t expecting to come home with my first tautogs if my life but I did. It turned out to be a great morning and I’m about to eat some of the tog for dinner tonight.
Hook & Spoke 