It had been several years since I last set foot on the fabled beaches of Cape Cod, but I immediately felt at home with the backdrop of the pounding surf and expansive Atlantic Ocean to one side, tall sand dunes eroded by years of harsh weather to the other. At one time in my past I spent many a night walking these beaches in search of striped bass, but nowadays I am lucky to get this far onto the Cape more than a couple of times per season.
It was the third night of vacation, and despite renting a house in Brewster, my mind had been made up weeks ago that I’d spend any allotted fishing time on the backside. It was an okay night working both Ballston and Head of the Meadow as Chris and I picked away at about 20 bass between us—mostly by Chris—from 5 to maybe 15 pounds; we had found life and made plans to return in two nights when the wind was predicted to swing around out of the east.
Leaving the house a little early, we stopped at Newcomb Hollow on the way to Ballston. Chris had fish right away in front of the parking lot, but the fish were small and I marched north in hopes of finding something better. My gamble didn’t pay off as I landed a single fish for my walk while Chris beached eight fish with several of them around 15 pounds. The bite died as the tide topped out, so we made the move to Ballston hoping for an improvement on the previous outing. Unfortunately we didn’t find nearly as good of action as two nights prior as this time the fish were scattered and every 20 or 30 casts would yield a single, small bass. We lingered longer than the action warranted hoping for something to happen, but it didn’t.
The next day was for the family, but I still managed to convince everyone that a visit to Ballston once the parking lot was open to the public was a good idea to cap off the day with a little picnic dinner. After chowing down our grinders, a walk to the south revealed improving structure the further we walked so Chris and I decided to start at Newcomb that night. Building on the early success of the prior night, we made sure to arrive with as much of the rise still ahead of us as possible—it was a good choice.
The sun had just set and there were at least 75 cars still parked in the lot when we arrived. My first cast directly below the parking lot produced a hit, but I swung late and missed; no worry as a second fish fell into line and I didn’t make a mistake on this second opportunity. It was a small bass of maybe 5 pounds, but a fish nonetheless. Chris and I leap-frogged north, finding small fish at each stop as we went along. There was a very defined bar about 50 feet off the beach with deep water on both sides. The fish struck tight to the structure, inside and out, and we knew if we could find the cut then the action could be even better. Finally, after nearly a mile of walking, casting, catching and walking some more, we found what we had been looking for. A deep hole lay in front of us, its presence given way by both the steep slope to the beach and the absence of offshore breakers. For the next hour or so, until the tide topped out, we had a hit on almost every cast. The fish were not huge—most from 5 to 15 pounds with a few right around 20—but the action was nonstop.
We fished our way back to the parking lot and picked up several more fish, but there was no discernable rhyme or reason to the bite with so much water now on top of the structure. Once back at the truck, and still full of adrenaline, we moved north to Ballston. It was all for naught as despite casting for three more hours, the only sign of life either of us found was in the form of some very large seals monitoring our movement up and down the beach. This was to be our final night of fishing during the family vacation, and while not as good as the ‘good old days,’ it was well worth the effort.