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Buzzard's Bay Fluke

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sams

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This summer i have been trying to dial in the Buzzards Bay fluke.  I thought I was making good progress 2 weeks ago when I managed to catch a limit of keepers including a 24" kicker on my last fish.  In the 3 or 4 trips since then I don't think that I have managed 0 legal fish and less small fish than I did up until that point.  Most of the areas I am fishing are shallow structure or edges where there is a decent amount of current.  These areas are also subject to a lot of boat traffic and the best day I had was a Friday, which leads me to believe that boat traffic may be part of the problem on weekends.  Another factor may be that these fish were on squid which may have moved off and changed the pattern.

 

Is there anyone on here that regularly fishes for and catches fluke in Buzzard's Bay?  I'd love to know that there are enough resident fish in the bay to make sure that I am not chasing ghosts.  Any general tips about depth, type of structure, etc.. would be a bonus.  Feel free to PM if you are willing to share a little something, but not with the whole world.  

 

sam

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Past summers I've chase them and August seems to be skunked with them fishing 30-50ft of water. Not sure why.

 

I swear not wasting time chasing them after July lol. Maybe I am wrong.

Edited by foxfai
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We were out in lower BBay on Sunday.
Areas where we were hitting SeaBass were shallow but we got the occasional micro-fluke.

Areas in 60ish feet of water where we expected to find fluke were flukeless.

The only keeper sized fluke we caught was at the dock in Fairhaven.

DITCH TROLL
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1 hour ago, jason colby said:

Nothing wrong with what you are doing but there are "too few" fluke around, especially inshore, to worry about not catching.

I believe the population of fluke, in general,  is in deep doo doo....

I agree, and for some reason the state continues to bend over backwards to make sure the commercials drag up each and every one, from increasing trip limits to increasing the quota every year which is now even higher than Black Sea bass, and its only 30% filled at this point, whatever stock assessment they did to base the numbers on is complete dog poo

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51 mins ago, Two Rock said:

I agree, and for some reason the state continues to bend over backwards to make sure the commercials drag up each and every one, from increasing trip limits to increasing the quota every year which is now even higher than Black Sea bass, and its only 30% filled at this point, whatever stock assessment they did to base the numbers on is complete dog poo

I had a meeting last week with Mike Armstrong (MA DMF Deputy Director) and in that he said the amount of observer coverage in state waters is "near zero %". So if they do find a patch of fish and they are allowed 100 pounds/day they will gladly toss over 1000 pounds of 14-16 in fish dead to retain only the 100 pounds of the more valuable jumbos. I doubt they would do that with an observer aboard....

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5 hours ago, sams said:

This summer i have been trying to dial in the Buzzards Bay fluke.  I thought I was making good progress 2 weeks ago when I managed to catch a limit of keepers including a 24" kicker on my last fish.  In the 3 or 4 trips since then I don't think that I have managed 0 legal fish and less small fish than I did up until that point.  Most of the areas I am fishing are shallow structure or edges where there is a decent amount of current.  These areas are also subject to a lot of boat traffic and the best day I had was a Friday, which leads me to believe that boat traffic may be part of the problem on weekends.  Another factor may be that these fish were on squid which may have moved off and changed the pattern.

 

Is there anyone on here that regularly fishes for and catches fluke in Buzzard's Bay?  I'd love to know that there are enough resident fish in the bay to make sure that I am not chasing ghosts.  Any general tips about depth, type of structure, etc.. would be a bonus.  Feel free to PM if you are willing to share a little something, but not with the whole world.  

 

sam

I don’t fish that area but I think that keeper fluke get fished out as the summer progresses. Fluke fishing has been pretty bad everywhere the last few years but I’ve had better luck fishing in areas that others don’t think would have fish. Channels adjacent to rocky areas can be good. Think places people drive right by to go to “better” water. Also look for clouds of bait on your fish finder. A lot of times the fluke will be in the same areas as the bait. 

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Fished the BB Area for many years (just not recently). We always focused just on the West end of the Canal no further out than the 4 Can. Always caught our fair share of fish ranging from 16 -22", however we got turned onto Point Judith and we found for the extra few minutes drive it was much more worth while with our catches averaged between 22"-26" fish with larger in the mix. 

 

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I fished that last 4 days for a few hours each morning.  The first day was slow, but it got better after that.

 

One of the biggest issues I face is that the main spots I fish, fish best on the out going tide.  And, as anyone that knows BB is aware you are not going to drift with the out going tide anytime after 10am due to the SW kicking up.  I have always used a sea anchor to stay as much with the current as possible and it works pretty well with the tide at full flow and the wind 10kts or less.  This weekend the tides lined up to give me more of a shot at those conditions.  I also tried to figure out some other ways of making my jig present moving down current with mixed success.

 

It wasn't a banner weekend, but we managed 6 keepers between 3 of us on Saturday and I saw a limit fishing alone on Sunday (2 very siolid fish dropped off about 2 feet from the net.).

 

I also dropped what I think was a true doormat after having it on for a few minutes, but never got a look.  I hooked this fish on the drop and it started to head shake when I came tight.  It glided just up off the bottom and then held where I couldn't really move it.  Then came the very distinct head shake and feel of the hook pulling out.  I'll think about that fish for a while and get after him again in a few weeks when I get back down.

 

sam

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5 hours ago, sams said:

I fished that last 4 days for a few hours each morning.  The first day was slow, but it got better after that.

 

One of the biggest issues I face is that the main spots I fish, fish best on the out going tide.  And, as anyone that knows BB is aware you are not going to drift with the out going tide anytime after 10am due to the SW kicking up.  I have always used a sea anchor to stay as much with the current as possible and it works pretty well with the tide at full flow and the wind 10kts or less.  This weekend the tides lined up to give me more of a shot at those conditions.  I also tried to figure out some other ways of making my jig present moving down current with mixed success.

 

It wasn't a banner weekend, but we managed 6 keepers between 3 of us on Saturday and I saw a limit fishing alone on Sunday (2 very siolid fish dropped off about 2 feet from the net.).

 

I also dropped what I think was a true doormat after having it on for a few minutes, but never got a look.  I hooked this fish on the drop and it started to head shake when I came tight.  It glided just up off the bottom and then held where I couldn't really move it.  Then came the very distinct head shake and feel of the hook pulling out.  I'll think about that fish for a while and get after him again in a few weeks when I get back down.

 

sam

How deep were you fishing for this duration?

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12 hours ago, Richard_the_Aughth said:

@MrJingles can catch them from shore

Anyone can do it, I just think there isn’t a lot of people attempting it. It’s not prolific limit catches like they see further south, but I’m picking up 4-5 pretty much everywhere I target per trip. I’m just scratching the surface of the MA shore fluke fishery at this point, still lots of coast to explore but it’s absolutely doable.

 

I’ve been catching numbers since the season opened until present, at all stages of tides. 

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