Northern NE Fishing

[Jamato14]

Haven’t seen many posts for north of Long Island so figured I’d start a NH/ME/MA thread, hope it’s helpful or at least an enjoyable read.

Been slow this year with haddock, have caught (and released) more cod than I’ve see. Haddock. Tuna up here is tuna I’ll leave it at that, quotas closed for commercial and it’s been hit or miss for the rec guys.

Sunday I was haddock fishing and ended up with the biggest fish I’ve gotten boat side while running my own boat and biggest on the new boat. Might not be the greatest fighting fish but on a haddock jig and a tld20 it was a ball especially on the new to me (this season) boat. Fun day offshore for me and the GF and so thrilled she was able to drive it up while I fought it. Next time hoping for a tuna…on the tuna gear

 

[Willy-C]

Saturday I took my 19’ out to Jeffries out of Hampton, we slammed the haddock at 240’. Picked up a few nice cusk and pollock. Made the mistake of bringing my smaller 8O qt cooler and had to rely on a few insulated zip up bags for the other 20 lbs of fish before calling it at 1:30 cuz no room to keep fish. Ended up with 27 nice keepers haddock (only 2 undersized ) and about 10 cusks and 8 pollock. Not bad for three guys on a puny a$$ boat but we did it.
Can’t wait to go back but this storm coming at us will stir up the ocean up here.

 

[Jamato14]

Congrats, that’s the type of day I haven’t had in years. I’m heading out Friday to try a few spots with some friends. Seems like it’ll be decent Friday hope to get into the fish. I usually use jigs but we are going to try dropper rigs and clams since that’s what it seems like most folks are getting them on this year

 

[Willy-C]

We’re are using Tanacom 750’s, 20 oz weights, dual hook dropper rigs, clams, dead sticking and drifting. No jigging, no teasers. We caught and released at least 30-40 dogs but we didn’t care with the elec reels, we caught keepers in between the dogs.

 

[Willy-C]

Not sure how you fish but we find jigging draws in the cod and pollock more, I think they like to chase, plus it wears out your arms. We will stop on a side of a hill and like to drift off the side into deeper water. We think the fish are hiding on the slack side of a drop off or following bait there. I use a wind up egg timer and set it for 5 mins, if we don’t get something decent we move on maybe a few hundred yards each time about 4 or 5 times. If nothing good we will move a mile or so and repeat. When we get a few good ones we will drift till we notice a slow down, then we move to repeat the last drift.
The other thing we have one guy when drifting raise up his bait up about 5’ increments in case the haddock are just off the bottom. A few weeks ago we found the haddock were feeding about 10’ off the bottom, we limited out that day.

 

[Willy-C]

Yesterday, although the first three fish over the side were nice keeper haddock we were inundated with constant hungery dogfish. Couldn’t get away from them but managed to still make a happy cooler with mostly decent cusk, only kept 11 haddock. The ocean was flat flat flat even as the hurricane talk was ramping up.

edit:
Forgot to mention I was almost spooled by a big 8’ blue that wanted my haddock more than me, lucky it bit off the leader.