Captain's Log

The 2004 Season

An electrical glitch with the Lemke-Ann challenged the best technicians at Cataumet Boats early last May, but they came through for me, as usual, with a solution. We made our first mackerel run in late May. While we caught the tail end of the run, we still had good success and I caught my bait for the season.

The season's sea bass and scup run started later than usual this year. The winter of 2003 - 2004 was incredibly cold and saw most of Buzzard's Bay frozen over, making it look more like the Artic Ocean than Cape Cod. However, once the bite began, we had some great fishing trips. My long-time customer, Bill Ma and his crew, filled their coolers with scup and sea bass.

Pea-soup fog, due to the cold water, made for some challenging runs to begin the Fluke Season in late June. Thanks to my radar and chart plotting equipment, we were able to make our runs despite limited visibility. Once the fluke bite started, we consistently boated limits of keeper size fish along with some large stripers, taken on fluke rigs.

The usual schools of three to six pound blue fish showed up for some great surface action in Buzzard's Bay. This provided a change of pace from bottom fishing trips in June and July.

I began my chunking trips off Gay Head in mid-July. Another long-time customer, David Wroe, and his family, enjoyed consistent action with schools of blue fish and managed to boat some large stripers in the mix.

With the aid of my chart plotter and sonar, we were able to anchor in precise spots on every trip and my customers enjoyed some of the most consistent action I've experienced in all of my years of fishing. As July turned to August, along with consistent catches of bass, larger blues and bonito began mixing in on chunking trips. I had several customers catch "Cape Cod Grand Slams", which consist of a bass, blue and bonito all caught on the same day. My friends, Tom Walsh and Steve Pearson, both achieved this feat while we were filming a segment of On the Water Magazine's "Fishing New England".

One late September day, I was fishing with my friend, Tony Gola, who works for Mass Fish and Wildlife. Tony caught a "super slam" - which consists of a bass, blue, bonito and false albacore. Also on that day, I landed a bass that weighed approximately 35 pounds. I released it, but only after taking several photos for my new brochure!

October saw winds consistently over 25 knots, which caused me to cancel most of my scheduled trips. A late October trip with Gary Galas and Sue Townsend saw a good catch of tautog despite strong winds and rough conditions. Nearing Halloween, I took one last mission of mercy trip to retrieve Captain Jolly Roger's lobster traps: my neighbor, Roger Collin, caught an unexpected limit of large tautog and we also secured Jolly's traps. The boat was hauled later that week, ending the 2004 season.

I would like to thank all of my customers for a great season. Despite lousy weather, we still enjoyed some great fishing trips.

It is now late April and I can't wait to get started. The Lemke-Ann has already successfully been launched and I'm beginning test runs in search of fish. With luck, the mackerel should be running in a few more weeks.

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