A Summer to Remember

We haven’t seen a summer like this in a long time

2022 is already a summer to remember on St. Pete Sport Fishing and it’s only mid-July! We haven’t seen a spring or early summer run on Striped Bass like this in a very, very long time. Both the bayside and the south side have just been loaded with Stripers and they’ve really got some heft to them.

What makes this a summer to remember?

Since mid-June, we’ve been finding fish from Handkerchief Shoals to the far end of Bearse. We’re also finding fish on Little Round and Stonehorse.  As the month has progressed, there seems to have been some migration more to the east. However, Handkerchief Shoals still has plenty of Bluefish hanging around out there.

When you get out to Bearse, you’ll find that the fish are really spread out. The other day, we were finding fish close to shore in the west and they spread out as far as the 3-mile limit to the east. In addition, there were fish in the rips and out on the flats of the shoal. From what we could see, It looked like everyone was hooking up no matter what method they were using but the Stripers were feeding heavily on squid.

After we caught our fill of Stripers, we skipped out to Stonehorse trying to jig up a couple of Black Sea Bass or Fluke, but we kept hooking up on Stripers. Not a bad problem to have except when the customer really wanted a few Sea Bass. We were able to pull one keeper Fluke but that was all. The bigger Sea Bass are really moving around. I haven’t been able to find any consistent action where the fish linger for more than a few days.

It’s the summer of the Hoochie.

No, not the Urban Dictionary definition of Hoochie, I’m talking about artificial rubber squid baits called Hoochies here on the Cape.

We’ve been running with a combination trolling setup. We use either orange or red Hoochies with an SP Minnow chaser and the results have been phenomenal. We paired up the new Hogy Trolling Rods with Avet Reels loaded with 80 lb. test braid and 110 lb monofilament leaders. I know that sounds like overkill but with some of the huge Blues and doubles that we’ve been landing, it’s worth it.

We put out between 100 – 150′ of line and troll at speeds between 4 and 5 knots. We’re doubling up on a lot of the drifts on both rods. Many times even doubling up on a single rod. The other day, we landed two throwback Stripers, both over 38″ on one rod. I thought we were pulling up the ocean floor! We had another couple around 40″ this past week and one that straightened the hook. We’ve been pushing the drag limits on the reels for sure. What a blast! It’s been awesome to catch some of the fat cows and watch them swim away as we safely release them back into the water for another day.

Time to slap some wire.

Once we’ve landed a bunch of fish on the trolling lines, it’s time to let the customers have some fun jigging wire lines. This is called slapping wire. This is pretty unique to Cape Cod because where we are fishing, it’s a big sandbox. This allows us to let the jigs slam the bottom without getting hung up. In other areas, there would be too much weed, mud, or structure to work properly.

We use 3 oz. lead jigs designed by Captain Dan Hannon on 300′ of steel wire. We’re continually jigging the rod while trolling at speeds between 2 – 3 knots. The jig slams into the sandy bottom and creates an explosion of sand that the big Striped Bass just can’t ignore. A lot of boats on the bayside of Cape Cod use this method. However, St. Pete seems to be one of only a few on the Southside charter boats to employ this very effective and fun method of fishing.

Don’t miss this summer to remember

If you’ve ever thought of getting out on the waters of Cape Cod, don’t miss this unique opportunity. Book a trip now. The fish won’t hang around for too much longer. Once the waters start to warm up the fish will migrate to deeper waters where into cooler temperatures and out of the reach of anglers. Many times, out past the 3-mile state limits where anglers can’t take fish.