In the waters of southern New England, any form of structure, from rockpiles and mussel beds to shipwrecks and pilings, can hold tautog. I was fishing with my good friend Captain Nat Chalkley aboard the Annie P, a restored Seacraft with a custom pilothouse. The first fish to come over the rail was a fat-lipped 4-pound fish, shortly followed by a fish of similar size. Tautog fishing is all about location. At one point, we cruised around a small area for 20 minutes before Nat settled on a rockpile in about 48 feet of water.
One look at the fishfinder display made it obvious that we had found the beehive. Sitting on the bottom near the Hedge Fence shoal off Oak Bluffs are two wrecks that are perennial hotspots for tautog.
Look for wrecks marked on your chartplotter and then search the area with your fishfinder to find the structure. The rocky shores of the Elizabeth Islands offer piles of cobblestones, boulders, and rocky ledges that will hold tautog. The rock structure surrounding Gay Head is a tautog utopia, with massive boulders and large piles of rock that give the fish plenty of nooks to hide in. In Buzzards Bay, Cleveland Ledge is a well-known spot but it can host large crowds of fishermen, and keeper-size tautog can be tough to find if the ledge has been fished hard.
Branch out and search along the coast, targeting rocky points of land that drop sharply into deeper water.
In general, the more structure the better, but occasionally a small mussel bed or rockpile will hold a surprising number of large fish. When searching for structure, you can use charts as a starting point, but the majority of structure will not be charted. Slowly idle along likely areas while watching for sudden rises, drops, and signs of hard bottom to appear on the screen. The best structure is often found in areas that have little or no changes in bottom contour.
These isolated structures can be magnets for tautog looking for shelter and crustaceans to munch on. Anchoring is the most effective way to fish structure when chasing tautog because it allows you to maintain position over the wreck. When anchoring on structure, deploy the anchor upcurrent or upwind of the target so the boat will slide down and position you directly over the wreck.
A matter of a couple yards can make a big difference when tautog fishing. One side of the boat may be producing while the other is not; pay attention, and concentrate your efforts in the most productive area.
If the boat begins to swing on the anchor line, be prepared to reset the anchor so that you stay directly over productive structure. Captain Chalkley carries two anchors with him so he can precisely hold over a productive location. Sometimes you will mark fish.
The seas in the sound can kick up within a few hours to that of the ocean, particularly in a Northeaster. Storms have left their imprint not just on the shore. In the days before sonar, radar and electronic navigational tools, there were lightships in Nantucket Sound, to mark the treacherous shallow waters.
Despite the aggressive efforts by lightships and lighthouses and buoys to keep ships safe, storms, fog and human error took their toll. Broken ships mark the sandbars. In some cases the wood of a ship may have rotted away, the iron of a ship rusted away, and the evidence left is the cargo. At the site where the schooner John Paul sank at the turn of the century, there is a hill of huge blocks of granite.
Each block is six feet in size, piled high, and undeterred by the movement of the sand. There is coal left over from some lost coal-carrying vessel down amidst the sandy bottom in the waters off Joseph Sylvia State Beach. There are many other ships and the charter fishermen know most of them, as the fishing is good if you drift a baited hook above or near one. Lost ships are artificial reefs and they provide shelter for bait fish and the bigger fish that pursue them.
The sandy bottom of Nantucket Sound is also the home of large boulders, delivered by the receding glaciers of thousands of years ago.
Many of these boulders have names, some do not. Mill Rock is outside of Edgartown Harbor. Whether named or not, most of these rocks are adorned with lost fishing line, fishing lures, gear and maybe even an anchor or two.
Sandbars have names too, more names than the hills of the Vineyard. Sailors like sandbars and shoals with names. For a sandbar without a name is nearly always troublesome. As recently as July of last year, an foot sea scallop fishing boat, Kris and Amy, grounded two miles east of Oak Bluffs. It took a high tide and a tugboat to free her from the sand of Hedge Fence. Add up all of these underwater shallow areas and they occupy an area almost as big as Nantucket.
Nantucket Sound has plenty of shallow water. Anglers know them as fishing spots. Sailors with deep draft boats, know them as places to stay away from. The bottom landscape of Nantucket Sound can vary from less than five feet to 85 feet deep. The Sound is home for black sea bass, scup, bluefish, striped bass, false albacore, bonito, cod, tautaug, and it is a summer refuge for fluke. Itis the breeding place for black sea bass and squid and conch. Sometimes a hedge is the best screening if you don't need much height.
The current velocity increases from 1. Front yard fence and hedging just to formalize it compared to the rest of the Cape Cod House Plans interior and exterior look exteriror interior fence Marlene Goldstein.
Blue Marlin, lb. Cod, 92 lb. Hedge Fence, Zak Potter. Mackerel, 3 lb. They're at Hedge Fence as well, but there's an awful lotta boats there Living fences can include ornamentals, deciduous shrubs with vibrant foliage, and evergreens that provide texture and color.
They offer a range of textures, loose or dense growth, evergreen or deciduous, and a few even have showy blooms or berries, but all will grow I'm wanting to grow a Cape Honeysuckle privacy hedge in the space pictured.
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