Special Fishing Report From Cape Cod Bay
From: Capt. Hap Farrell
Subject: Light Tackle Jigging with Wire
11 July 2007
At 6:30 this morning, 11 July, three anglers Dennis Veronnean, Keith Tallberg, and Dave Sciaraffa, all from Connecticut, left Rock Harbor for a half day for sport fishing aboard the Stunmai II. We set out for the north edge of Billingsgate Shoals to do some jigging for stripers. This entails a fairly stiff rod with a substantial reel with round 320 feet of 50 test wire with a 3 oz. jigged eel directly tied to the wire.
Not long after land 3 good sized keepers averaging 33 inches, Dave Sciaraffa hooked onto a big fish. With some concerted effort he landed a very nice 46 inch bass weighing in 38 pounds. A good catch by anyone's standards. But the adventure of fishing had only begun.
On board I had a new set up. I had taken a very light freshwater pike rod with titanium guides, to handle the wire, and put a 320 GTI Penn reel with level wind on the rod. I'd filled the reel with 68 yards of a soft line (dacron) as a backing and then 300 feet of 30 pound test wire. You can't jig with the rod , but you can jig by hand and then fight the fish with that rod. As I understand it no one at the Goose Hummock had ever had anyone make up a rig like this. Some were skeptical on whether it would work.
I'll let you be the judge and see if a picture is really worth a thousand words. It's 46 inches and 35 pounds. It took 17 minutes too land.
