Maco's Bait and Tackle

The shop has been loaded with customers according to Tony at Maco’s Bait & Tackle where heatwave temps don’t seem to bother them as long as they are holding a fishing rod. There was an uptick in canal action this week with numerous schoolies in the 20-plus inch class being taken in the length of the canal and some jumbo mackerel were pulling hard in the east end to mid canal. There were reports of catches of four pound blues and bones mixed in the upper Buzzards Bay area down to the west end jetties. There are more tog being taken in the rockpiles and anglers are managing to scratch up a few legal sea bass in the same locations. While sea worms have been a hot commodity lately, they have taken over an old distributorship that I once bought worms from ages ago. Times change, and the world goes round.

According to Tony at Maco’s Bait & Tackle and a long following of customers the canal was dead this week except for some mackerel and a few bones near the west end. There is a lot of 3-inch baitfish that some schoolies were working on. The tautog season opened with a three fish bag limit on August 1, so he began measuring out quarts and gallons of green crabs. We know that big black sea bass like the green crabs as well. There are more people after fluke and they are finding a few more keepers in the mix in lower Buzzards Bay and the flats. The boats fishing in Cape Cod Bay are still taking some large fish using pogies and the tube and worm, along with trolling the deep running X-Raps. Freshwater still has its followers with a loyal group tossing weedless baits onto the heavy cover and extracting some bigger largemouths. The offshore bite is heating up and they carry flats of all sorts of rigged and unrigged baits.