The Fishing News

Lucky you, you are in this beautiful part of the world for a few precious days or weeks of vacation. And you've got an itch to go fishing. Maybe you want to get the whole family involved (great idea!). You've got just one question: "Where do I start?"

Kevin Blinkoff, editor of On The Water magazine, says it's a question he hears a lot. So he's got a high-level-bullet list of suggestions to get you where you want to go. That is, catching fish while enjoying your vacation.

The pressures of constant innovation extend even to the timeless pleasure of fishing.  

Every now and then a local angler happily pulls up a fish, only to discover that what's on the hook was not what was expected. 

There are plenty of reasons to fish at night. Yes, you're more likely to land bigger bass after dark. But it's also a great way to sharpen all your fishing senses.

As July brings warming waters to the Cape and Islands, the fluke fishing heats up. Also known a Summer Flounder, fluke are a flatfish, and very tasty. Oddly, fluke begin life looking much like a "regular" fish, but as they mature, one eye migrates around to join the other on the "up" side of the body. Ambush predators, fluke lie on the bottom waiting for something tasty to get swept along in front of them. It's a feeding strategy that can help you target them.

All right, yes, that's a headline that begs endless snarky suggestions. But really, for fishermen, it's a serious question.

Wait, you're going to catch a fish and throw it back? For non-fishermen, it's counterintuitive.

If you're looking for a "best bet" for Father's Day fishing, Black Sea Bass might be your winning pick. The fish are around in good numbers and seem to be extending their range northward in recent years. 

Black Sea Bass are a bottom fish. You want to look for them where there is bottom structure such as rockpiles, wrecks, ledges, or dropoffs. They are a schooling fish, so where you find one, you're likely to find more. They do like squid - a good set-up is to bait a weighted hook or jig with a piece of squid. 

For thousands of years smoking fish was a go-to method for food preservation. So now we have refrigeration and flash-freezing - but something in your ancestral genes still calls out for that smoky flavor, right? (Think bacon.) Smoking your catch in the backyard is not difficult to do, and it can add new color to the flavor palette of your summer. Here's what you need to know to get started.

At its most basic, hot-smoking is just slow-cooking with heat while infusing the fish with great smoky flavor. 

As we turn the corner into June, opportunities for surfcasting along Cape Cod and the Islands really pick up. Warming water temperatures draw striped bass close to shore to feed. But don't wait too long. By early/mid summer - as water temperatures continue to rise - those bigger bass will back off to deeper and cooler water.