It was one of the several places that I was familiar with in this area, having fished in a few tournaments there two decades or more before. I recalled that my tube and worm rigs had produced a few legal bass as I trolled in close to the structure while several other boats were anchored up bottom fishing nearby. On the first two passes we were skinned by a combination of scup and sub-legal black sea bass so I took in a half color of lead and began fishing higher in the water column, and a bit faster. That solved the bottom fish problem and we caught at least one striper, occasionally a double-header on each pass until we were able to put a limit of six stripers and two large sea bass in the cooler before we ran out of select sea worms.
When I kept my boat at the Crosby Boat Yard in the spring to commercially fish for black sea bass most of the other boats engaged in this fishery were working the Succonnesset Shoal area which could get pretty crowded, with boats and lines of fish pots, even on a weekday. I began looking for other options and settled on the aforementioned broken bottom in and around Bishop and Clerks shoal. That area was a popular bottom fishing location where tautog, big scup and stripers used the broken bottom and currents to their advantage and a few of the mid-size boats out of Hyannis Harbor would anchor and drift in the area in the spring and early summer and – depending on the season – fill up a bucket or two of squid.
At the end of April this year, I had reports of commercial squid boats working nearby and producing good catches in their drags. One commercial bass fisherman of my acquaintance told me about chunking for stripers after dark on the southern end of this aggregation of rocks, as the bass, along with bluefish, would move in and push baitfish up against the area where the currents raced over structure just beneath the sub surface rocks and into holes and the deeper pockets in the 12- to 20-foot depths, nearby. Two Fisherman readers kept a boat in the same harbor and told me they had a few moonlit nights when they anchored up in 15 feet of water and cast live eels into an area of submerged rocks and scored stripers from teen size to fish in the low 20-pound class.
Quite a few years ago I was on assignment for The Fisherman Magazine and Mercury Marine to fish with Boston Celtic Hall of Famer, John Havlicek who kept a boat in his home waters of Hyannis Harbor. They wanted a photo of John with a striper showing their engine in the background. I tried to make arrangements for the trip during a weekday, but his schedule only allowed for a Saturday morning trip. We made our way out of Hyannis and I was tempted to troll just outside the treacherous area between Point Gammon and Gazelle Rock but it was a bit sporty there that morning so we headed to Bishop and Clerks. I’d brought a pair of my custom tube and worm rods with Penn 330 GTI filled with Dacron backing and five colors of 36-pound test lead line. Havlicek enjoyed topwater plugging for stripers and blues but had never fished the tube and worm.
I chose to make our first pass on the west side of the structure trolling four colors in 15 to 20 feet of water. On the first past John hooked a good sea bass before the scup found us. There were several boats anchored up in the deeper water west of us picking away at scup and sea bass so our second pass was made a bit closer with less line where John hooked our first striper which we used for the Mercury photo. At 6-foot, 9 inches or so, John was surprised when I asked him to kneel down with his fish. I explained I couldn’t get him and the motor in the photo without him kneeling. He laughed and complied and his photo appeared on the cover of this magazine.
Take care while fishing there and visit on a low tide to familiarize yourself with the numerous hazards that lurk just under the surface. The varied terrain here holds many species, but can make things treacherous, if you don’t pay attention. Bishop and Clerks is located at 41 34.353N/70 14.945W and is marked by the Bishop and Clerks light station.
