Groundfishing out of Rockport, MA
Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 9:53 am
Last week my son and I went fishing out of Rockport, MA with our friend Wes ("WMHUNTS" from Iceshanty). He's got a beautiful 26' Mako that he primarily tuna fishes with, but he agreed to help us fill a cooler before we settled in waiting for a giant bluefin to bite a fresh mackerel.
We started off right of outside of Rockport Harbor fishing for bait. The mackerel weren't in their usual spots, but we were catching a few harbor pollock which would do in a pinch. Suddenly my son (Perchbait) pulled up a couple of mackerel on his Sabiki rig and we were into them good. I pulled up 6 at once, even! We put plenty in the livewell and headed out to Wes' haddock grounds.
The ocean was as flat as it gets, so we just drifted down the length of a ridge in ~170' of water. The fishing was pretty good, but we caught a lot of short haddock that had to go back. Also caught a bunch of cod which are totally off limits right now. Ended up with a nice mixed bag of haddock, pollock, cusk and cunner (little red "sunfish" looking guys with nasty looking teeth!) that filled a big cooler.
We then headed to Wes' tuna grounds, and we had lots of company. There must have been 30+ boats setup for tuna, including "Tuna.com" from Wicked Tuna. He was maybe 300yds from us. We saw several whales and an ocean sunfish, but no tuna wanted to play. We had a great time with Wes and brought home many tasty meals worth of haddock and pollock.
We also got in a little kayak striper fishing while we were down there. We each lost good ones, but managed to catch 6 little guys. Here's Perchbait with one he landed.
Looking forward to heading back down toward the end of August. Hopefully we'll be able to find some keeper stripers next time.
We started off right of outside of Rockport Harbor fishing for bait. The mackerel weren't in their usual spots, but we were catching a few harbor pollock which would do in a pinch. Suddenly my son (Perchbait) pulled up a couple of mackerel on his Sabiki rig and we were into them good. I pulled up 6 at once, even! We put plenty in the livewell and headed out to Wes' haddock grounds.
The ocean was as flat as it gets, so we just drifted down the length of a ridge in ~170' of water. The fishing was pretty good, but we caught a lot of short haddock that had to go back. Also caught a bunch of cod which are totally off limits right now. Ended up with a nice mixed bag of haddock, pollock, cusk and cunner (little red "sunfish" looking guys with nasty looking teeth!) that filled a big cooler.
We then headed to Wes' tuna grounds, and we had lots of company. There must have been 30+ boats setup for tuna, including "Tuna.com" from Wicked Tuna. He was maybe 300yds from us. We saw several whales and an ocean sunfish, but no tuna wanted to play. We had a great time with Wes and brought home many tasty meals worth of haddock and pollock.
We also got in a little kayak striper fishing while we were down there. We each lost good ones, but managed to catch 6 little guys. Here's Perchbait with one he landed.
Looking forward to heading back down toward the end of August. Hopefully we'll be able to find some keeper stripers next time.