Floundering for Squid
Cape vacation fishing with Gary
Plans change more often than we would like. Unfortunately, between weather and childhood ear infections, the kids’ trip with Gary didn’t pan out the way we wanted. That said, we still went fishing.
Gary texted me that he had arrived on Cape with the boat, and I texted back, holding a fishing rod, saying, “Ready when you are.”
I told him that the night before I had seen several squid staged around the jetties at the mouth of the harbor when I went fishing yesterday. This got Gary very fired up, as squiding (squid fishing) has become a major hobby of his in his home waters of Connecticut. He’s also largely transitioned away from striped bass and bluefish that we used to pursue, and is now a huge fan of “rough fish,” or groundfish species prized for their table fare but not necessarily for their looks, such as Tautog and black sea bass.
With the boat being new- quite literally six hours on the engine our first evening trip out would be a test run for the engine, the live well, the GPS, the fish finder, the anchor, and nearly anything else on a boat that can go wrong. Surprisingly, nothing went wrong.
Gary was interested in captaining the boat, so I was in charge of fishing. I rigged my heaviest rod with a high-low style flounder rig and 3 ounces of weight. I had a second rod rigged with a swim jig, and my third rod was rigged with a soft plastic. The wind and tide were absolutely ripping, which allowed us to troll the depth change near the mouth of the harbor without even using the motor.
This technique of dragging my rig across the bottom resulted in the first fish brought aboard the boat. An undersized summer flounder also known as a fluke ; I released the “rat,” and we motored up current to start another drift. We repeated this cadence half a dozen times, landing a total of four undersized fluke.
With the sun setting, we anchored up as close as was comfortable to the jetty at the mouth of the harbor and began to deploy our squiding tackle. The shortfin squid, or likely any squid, are attracted to light that mimics either prey or other squid. Gary powered on a submerged green squid light to help attract bait and, hopefully, squid to the boat. We would bounce our squid jigs around the edge of the glow and hopefully snag a squid. We were close enough to the jetty that we could see anglers landing squid with their own light bars, but either we were too deep or too far away from the jetty to tempt any squid, and after a few hours of casting and retrieving, we stowed our gear and headed home.
Three days later gary and I decided to fish for a few hours under the bright sun as the tide was high. We prospected around the Brewster Flats looking for deep holes or any signs of working birds. I had one follow from what looked like a striped bass, and missed a hookset on the flounder rig. Clearly, our flats fishing was a bust, but we were determined to give our baits at least one more chance. We pointed the bow east and ran several miles further to a shoal known as Sunken Meadow. We found several boats working the shoal, including a charter that both Gary and I quickly identified as the (im)famous “Stunmai 2,” named by her captain as an anadrome for I-Am-Nuts. Lacking the traditional heavy gear to target striped bass on the shoal, we deployed the same flounder rigs as before. While drifting, I worked the swim jig and had the bait attacked by a large squid. Of course, I’d almost hooked a squid in broad daylight on a different lure. Our flounder rigs were hit with heavy fish that shook their heads all the way to the surface, not like a flounder, like a large dogfish. These miniature sharks are the bane of New England anglers. While they are used for food, they excrete urea through their skin, making careful meat preparation a necessity, and neither Gary nor I were interested in that undertaking. While releasing my “mini jaws,” Gary exclaimed that he’d hooked the bottom. I looked over to see his rod bent as he popped the boat into neutral, and then we watched the line dart away from the boat. The drag began to peel, and Gary started to steer the fish toward the rear of the boat. The line parted. The 40-pound leader had let go with whatever fish had consumed Gary’s bait. My guess, after talking to another angler who had been out that day, was that it was a monster striped bass. Mildly defeated, we turned the boat around and headed home.
Did we load the boat? Heck no, but then again we rarely do. I got to go fishing with a buddy for the first time in more than five years on a body of water that I hadn’t fished in nearly a decade. We got to try new techniques, run a new boat, and catch up on all of life’s topics like what the kids are doing, how everyone’s health is, and most importantly: fish stories.
