Fishing Reports Cape May Nov 1 to Nov 30

[CapeMayRay]

Another nasty weekend at the shore. Canceled charters for today and tomorrow due to the weather. No window of opportunity the whole weekend. Rain and high winds all day today and higher winds for Sunday. Another blow out weekend. Can't make any money or have any fun making it tough to sit home during prime fishing time.

[brad regan 01]

yeah weather sucked this weekend... hope you can get back out there soon.

[livetofishnj]

looks like this whole week is a blowout. This sucks, need to get some bass fishing done!

[CapeMayRay]

Weather has been brutal. High winds and cold. Looks like charter for tomorrow will be off. Talking 25 degrees with a 19 mph wind. Not great open boat fishing weather. Cold with no wind maybe doable, but with wind no fun at all.

Would go today light wind with snow flurries but have doctors appointment right at prime time and tide.

[livetofishnj]

looks like Sunday might be fishable but cold, then it's back with the wind until at least the middle of next week. This has been a horrible run of weather.

[CapeMayRay]

Just a brutal week. High winds and cold. Canceled charters for this weekend again and no nice days in sight. Went down to check the boat and the water is nice and clean, but just no fun fly fishing in and open boat when it is below freezing and wind over 25 mph.

[CapeMayRay]

After canceling charters for Saturday and Sunday morning I got a window of opportunity this afternoon. With a light wind I left the dock at 4:00 pm near the top of the tide. Water at the marina was 45 degrees.

Went to the inlet rocks where the water was 45.6 with a light wind from the west. Started working the rocks with 300 sinking line and chartreuse buck tail deceiver. Had decent action until it got dark. Went 4 for 7 hits. All stripers were small. 17 1/2 to 22 inches but fun on the fly. Found a long fairly slow strip worked best.

Bite stopped as soon as it got dark. Cause Bio luminescence again. Big trails behind flies and fly line and big blue glow behind electric motor. I fished till 6:00 pm. It was getting colder and being the only one out and fishing dead I headed in.

That stuff has been around for at least two weeks now. With the fly I can't get anything to bite after dark. It just shuts down the bite dead.

[livetofishnj]

nice to see you finally got out. Did the same up north with lesser results. Water up at the north end of the state is still hovering at the 50 degree mark.

That bio luminescence is a real pain, I'm yet to hear of a way to deal with it and still catch. It feels like it's a lot colder than it usually is when that algae is around.

[CapeMayRay]

I hear people say they catch with that glow in the water but I can't do anything with the fly. Could be that the extra thickness of fly line puts more glow than mono. Only way I can catch when those conditions exist is under lights.

After a pretty decent night last night I wanted to get out again this afternoon as the number of fishing days is winding down. It was windier than yesterday, but a bit warmer. Just as we got down to the boat around 3:30 pm the wind picked up more and it was now blowing about 20 mph out of the south east.

Since it is never too windy to fly fish we thought we would give it a shot. We headed out to the inlet and found it not too user friendly. Fishing out side the inlet was not a option. There was good wave action, with big waves splashing up onto the jetty.


With the wind blowing hard over the top of the jetty the only way we could fish was to get in the lee of the rocks and using sinking line cast low under wind blowing over the top of the rocks.


Keeping the boat there was the trick. Even with the electric motor it was a full time job cause the wind wanted to blow you right away. We were both using sinking line to penetrate the wind. I was using my usual chartreuse/white buck tail deceiver and Peter was using a white one.

It was tough fishing at best because of the wind, but we each caught a fish. I got this nice 24 incher and Peter got a 18 incher.

We had a tough but fun afternoon and just as the it was getting dark we headed in. Didn't want to mess with the bio luminance again. The water temp was this afternoon was 45.7

[CapeMayRay]

Had a great Thanks Giving this morning and had a Husband Wife Fly charter out. It was much windier than they predicted and a good chop on the out side of the inlet rocks and a lot of boat wakes on the inside from everyone going out. With the water a bit murky and them having a bit of difficulty casting flies into the wind I made a move into the back bay.

Water was 47.1 degrees and much cleaner. Here worked a couple of areas and got husband his first striper on a fly ever. This was his first go at saltwater fly fishing. He is a freshwater fly guide in western Pa and good at catching trout. He had no problems with the heavier weight lines and was excited about getting his first striper.

He was using sinking line and chartreuse/white buck tail deceiver.

It seemed to just keep getting windier and his wife gave up on the fly and opted for a plug. She was use to casting much lighter rods and the heavy weight line was tough for her in the wind. Using a plug she missing one and got this guy.

We had one other small bass on the fly and as it was time to go in it started getting nicer so we shot out the inlet, for a last try and were able to work the rocks. With the tide fairly low and the water very dirty we got one more bass on a plug before calling it a day.


We had a nice lunch together, talked fishing and afterward I showed him some areas to fish tomorrow and gave him some deceivers to use. He invited me up for a shot at fresh water trout fishing up in his neck of the woods.