Pleasent Bay

Ask anyone on the lower cape and they will tell you Pleasent Bay has some of the best saltwater fishing around. It is as close to fishing in the florida keys as you can get. Similar to bonefishing, striped bass will hang out on the long expanses of flats during high tide. The tides on the Cape are quite different from the tides of the south. For example typical Cape tides fluctuate between 8 and 12 feet on average. This creates a complicated fishing enviornment producing a wide variety of areas which become productive based on the water level. The most important thing to find when looking for striped bass is structure (rocks, drop off's, jettis). During the low tides, stick mainly to deep channels with long eel grass and on the high tides look for fast flowing rips over large pieces of structure. Jigging lures of all sorts in the seems to be the presentation preferred by the early spring bass. Umbrella Rigs will also work during spring to summer months when the bass are still holding in deep areas across the bay. As the summer comes into full swing the bass will begin to move into more shallow areas such as flats, eel grass sand bars and shallow rocky areas. During this time the bass will take a variety of topwater lures, which happens to be my favorite method of catching stripers. Suprisingly large fish (upwards of 40") will be haning out in these shallow areas of 2-5 feet. The fish prefer that the shallow areas have significant tidal flow to keep fresh bait fish moving through the currents. Stripers are a lazy fish that will wait behind structure out of the tide until the time is right to ambush a defensless creature caught in the tide. When properly presented with a topwater bait these fish will hit a with amazing force producing a spectacular explosion out of the water. The fights are very strong with the currents and the fish will run 2 to 3 times before they tire enought for landing. Fishing these shallow rocky areas requires a medium to heavy action rod with a braided or heavy mono line. From experience I have noticed smaller sized popppers work well in early summer months when bass are still shy in the shallow water, but as summer comes into full swing the larger poppers produce the best results. The larger topwater lures seem to attrack the biggest and healthiest fish around the bay. As summer winds down sometime between early and late September the bass will fall off the flats and shallow areas and return to the deep channels. With the bass in the deeper areas dropping a lure down to them can prove to be quite difficult since all of the schoolie fish have now congregated to chase the herring spawn out of the bay. Thousands of schoolie stripers and bluefish fill the bay making it come to life with birds and active waters almost any way you look. Around the time the schoolies make their way into the ocean and back towards the Chesapeake the larger bass have left as well and the fishing season comes to a close. Some stripers that are not healthy enought to make the journey to the Chesapeke Bay will winter over in the bay and other areas of the cape, but lie dormant and are unresponsive to almost any fishing techniques. The winter is saved for repairing fishing equipment, recalling fishing tales and preparing for another productive fishing season in the bay.

by Dana Richardson