The Cape Cod Area

Intro | Water Types | Tide & Wind | Tactics | Light or Night? | Gear

Cape Cod has long been a vacation spot for both fishermen and families. The peninsula has more recently become a mecca for inshore saltwater fly fishermen, largely because it offers a diverse fishing terrain: coves, flats, and estuaries on the south side; outer Cape beachfronts; and quieter bayside inlets. There is a type of water to match every fly fisherman's tastes. Figuring out how to fish Cape Cod, however, requires some preparation.

Scouting and time on the water are undoubtedly the best ways to learn about an area. Scouting fishermen pick a few spots and fish them regularly during various tides (incoming, outgoing), directions of wind (off-shore, onshore, cross-shore), water temperatures, light (first or last light, midday, night), as well as times of year. Some areas, as fishy as they look, simply don't hold the migratory fish.

But a vacationer on Cape Cod usually does not have the luxury of spending a lot of time scouting an area. Since striped bass and bluefish are migratory species, locating the schools of fish is paramount to catching them.

The many excellent bait shops on Cape Cod can provide current information about where the fish are and often what they are eating. The general fishing shops don't always stock fly-fishing equipment, but in the last few years several full-service fly shops have opened on the Cape, and they generally have all the equipment and advice you will need.

Guides are another way to learn about saltwater fly fishing. Good guides fish almost every day and know where the fish are and which tides and times of day offer the best fishing. They can show you firsthand how to identify the types of bait present, and how to select a fly and presentation technique that will work. Self-motivated fly fishers should start preparing for a trip several weeks in advance of a trip.

As water temperatures warm in spring, stripers and blues migrate north. Water temperatures in the 53- to 64-degree range are optimal feeding temperatures for the fish, and that means you can expect the stripers to be on the New York coast in early April; in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and around Block Island by mid-April; and around Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and the southside of the Cape by early May. Many of the fish will work around the outer Cape beaches, around Truro and Provincetown, into the bay, and up the Massachusetts coast to Maine, where they will spend late June through August eating and growing. As the water temperatures cool, the larger fish migrate south and can be caught again on the Cape from September through December.

Tom Keer is a Fly Fisherman field editor. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and has a home on Cape Cod.

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