Bound for Boston

For about the last 25 years I’ve wanted to fish for Striped Bass. Having tried to put a trip together or join someone else’s it hadn’t worked out, I wasn’t sure it would ever happen. Ideally that would have been on a beach or rocks and preferably at night, but it wasn’t to be. My 60^th birthday gave me the reason to eventually go and get it done.

I chose Boston as it was pretty much fly in and fish, did some research and made some calls. With that being done and the Tartan Army having left the city, a lone Scottish foot soldier jumped on a flight with high hopes. My fingers were crossed for better results.

I opted to stay in Winthrop, just outside the city and a 5-minute walk to the boat ramp of my skipper Joe Gugino. After a quick F2F intro on day one we drove down to the dock, he handed me three Costa Del Mar truckers caps, I picked the one I thought looked the luckiest and we set off into my first Boston sunrise. First stop live bait, mackerel had been thin on the ground, we needn’t have worried as I made short work of filling the live well in 20 minutes. I was thinking, was this a good omen?

With the back up bait collected it was off to find some fish on lures. With about 8 rod set ups to chose from, Joe handed me one which was set up with a glide bait attached. He went on to explain how he wanted to hate on them initially. I felt the same way. At 9 inches long and about 5 oz it was going to be hard work. Being assured of their effectiveness I started making some casts watching how the lure worked at various speeds and on the pause and twitch. About 30 mins later I had a follow and then my first Striper exploded on the lure. In the early morning sunshine, it was one of those anticipated moments you get in fishing which didn’t disappoint.

At this point we were fishing amongst the islands, and I had another couple of fish in quick succession. In all honesty if the day had ended there, I would have been happy. Joe then got a heads up from a contact that there was a blitz on a few miles outside of Boston light. When we arrived it was absolute mayhem, being a weekend there were lots of boats but also lots of birds, bait and Stripers! Keeping your eyes peeled for breaking fish and running close to them to set up your drift for your best guess as to which direction they were traveling was the name of the game. It was some of the most exciting fishing I’ve done. Casting up front gave me a great view of multiple fish following my lure, missing it numerous times, hooking up coming off and being hit again.

Day 1 had been an absolute screamer. Joe assured me it wasn’t always like this just to keep my feet firmly on the ground. I knew this to be true as invariably this is how fishing is. Like football, it’s the hope that can kill you. For today, it was fist bumps all morning and a few beers when I got back to my Airbnb.