Cod fishing

Cod fishing starting to pick up
By Dave Sartwell

Correspondent


Outdoors
Dave Sartwell

The cod fishing has been really good lately in several locations around the Cape. I recently spent the day fishing for cod and came home with enough for dinner and a few for the freezer. Of all of the fish we target, cod is our favorite for eating.
First, where do you find them?
It is a big ocean and there are lots of places to fish, but structure is the key. If you find variations in the ocean bottom, you will have a better chance of finding them. Here is where charts come in very handy.

Let's start in close to shore. If you are persistent and watch your numbers on the GPS you can easily locate the following sets of rocks. Using your Massachusetts Bay Chart No. 13267, look South of Eastern Point a couple of miles and you will find the troika of Kettle Ledge, Burnham Rocks and Saturday Night Ledge.
Burnham Rocks is a fairly small set of stones about the size of a house that rise up out of the bottom. It may take a few passes to find, however, the rewards can be worth the effort. On Thursday we were out there in a pretty stiff breeze and I found the stones with my GPS Garmin 198 C Sounder. The rocks peaked out at about 75 feet with the Eastern side of the structure dropping off to about 130 feet. The western side leveled out at about 120 feet. Every time I drove the boat over the stones the screen was filled with fish. They were right on the bottom, hovering around the structure.

The wind was blowing out from the Manchester shoreline, so I placed the boat about 200 feet to windward and just drifted over the structure. We caught a cod on about every pass. Although most were in the 16-20 inch range, we landed three keeper-sized fish.
I rigged my rod with a cod rig made by Sea Wolf Tackle located in Londonderry, N.H.. Although they make it in a variety of colors, we have had the best luck with the 6/0 Shrimp Pink model. You can get them at Three Lanterns in Gloucester. They consist of two hooks with bright pink plastic worms pulled over them, a swivel at one end to tie onto your line and a wire clasp on the other end to which you attach your sinker.

The weight you use depends on the speed of the wind and direction and speed of the tide. Because it was windy, I attached a lead of 20 ounces. On light air days, 12-ounce sinkers work well. I had a couple of containers of frozen clams. I cut two good chunks of clam and sewed them on each hook.

I swung the boat into position, dropped the rig right to the bottom and started my drift. I could feel the lead as it bounced along. Because of the action of the sinker dragging along the ocean floor, you will need to keep your hand on the line to feel the difference between sinker bounce and fish strike. It takes a little practice, but you will pick up on the strikes fairly quickly.

Just before we got to the stones, the line pulled to the right. I set the hook and immediately felt the wiggle of a fighting fish at the other end. Now for the long grind to the surface. Unfortunately our first fish of the day had to be thrown back because it was only 17 inches long. I set again and caught our first keeper when the sinker started bouncing around the rocks.

You must be willing to lose gear in this type of fishing. When you fish in the stones the sinkers will get caught. But, if you are fishing your rig where it is supposed to be, you just view this as a necessary evil. Some folks tie the sinker to the rig with a lighter line. You will still get caught up from time to time, but with this combination the line holding the sinker will break off saving your hooks.

Just south of Burnham Rocks is Saturday Night Ledge. Again, this is a small spot and you will have to be patient to find the hump. However, once you do you might find some really nice fish there. Again, just bump the bottom with your rig. The top of these rocks are about 20 feet deeper than the other two points, but should be fished the same way. Kettle Ledge is a little bigger than the others, but similar in nature.

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On Friday, my friends and I fished for stripers at the mouth of the Merrimack River. At 10:30 a.m. there were 57 boats working the mouth of the river on an outgoing tide. For a while there seemed to be a fish coming over the side of about every boat. Most folks were drifting chunks. We had gone up toward Salisbury Beach and found schools of mackerel. We chummed them up and caught a couple dozen on Sabiki rigs.

Using a pretty heavy weight to get them down in the running tide, we caught about 15 fish over the next three hours. The first 10 were almost all around 24 inches long, but then we found a school of keepers right where the river joins the ocean. The boys have been getting really big fish here at night fishing eels.