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Capt. Dave & Baymen Productions, filming on location today. We hammered the striped bass on light tackle and got some incredible footage for a future episode of The Baymen Life.

  Elizabeth, Co-Host of The Baymen Life, on location with Capt. Dave & The Baymen Crew

Capt. David Bitters

Baymen Guide Service, Inc. & Baymen Productions

(781) 934-2838 www.baymencharters.com E-mail: baymencharters@gmail.com

*Now booking fishing mid-July through September 2012, and The Spring Blitz May/June 2013

*Now booking fall winter 2012 puddle duck, sea duck,deer, rabbit

*Clamming trips for hardshell and softshell “steamers”

The bay was lit up this morning with lots of top-water and structure action. On board, I had repeat client, Gary Condon & Co. , President/CEO,Affordable Closet Systems. Gary has been fishing with me for many years and we always have a great time. Today was his first trip of the season and we slammed them on the bay!

Beautiful sunrise and tons of birds working schools of striped bass. We started the morning with light tackle, including rubber crank baits, 9” inch sluggos, and top-water poppers with with white saddle hackle tails.k Everything we threw out, the fish hit hard. From there, we went to a spot where the bass lay on the bottom and “crab” for about three weeks a year. There is very little seaweed early in the season, and we an fish our rubber crank baits right on the bottom in the middle of the crabs that the stripers are feeding on. They were there again today and we picked up several nice fish.

After top-water fishing and crabbing, we ran off shore and jigged up a bunch of Atlantic Mackerel. We set one, long drift in gusty 20-35 knots winds, and had all the mack we could use. We ran back inside and hit our first spot, in the Kingston Channel. Fifteen minutes later, not a single hit…! Started for spot #2 in Duxbury when I passed another little guzzle I have had some luck fishing on the top of the tide. But it was now dead-low tide and a tough time to entice any fish. I decided to do one drift just to check on it. We never left. Drift after drift, big stripers slammed out live mackerel without fail. We even drifted some whole dead macks and they still got slammed! It was dead low tide, the slowest time to fish, but the bass were hungry and did not care about the tide today.

We ended the morning with 30 striped bass boated, including 11 keepers. We dropped maybe half as many, including a big, big fish that slammed a red/white popper with white saddle hackle tail. The fish some how broke through a 20lb leader. If you catch a 40+ inch striped bass with a red/white popper in it’s jaw, please contact. I’d like to get a picture of that fish and get my popper back…!

Stay posted: the season is just getting going.

Capt. David Bitters, The BAYMEN

Baymen Guide Service, Inc. (781) 934-2838 baymencharters@gmail.com web: www.baymencharters.com

**Guided Fishing Trips leaving daily, except Sunday, on the Massachusetts South Shore, April-October**

I recently gave a presentation on fishing top-water plugs for striped bass on the Massachusetts coast. Here is the short-version that will help you catch more fish!

Several years ago, I started messing with feathers and poppers. Specifically, white rooster saddle hackle and 5” inch Gag’s Grabbers in white and red. The Gag’s poppers are filled with rattles that act as ballast allowing you to cast a country mile, and also work as an audible attracter when the popper is chugged along the water’s surface.

Most poppers don’t come standard with tail feathers. You are going to have to tie these into the rear hook yourself. I remove the hook from the lure and put it into my Konrad Gesner Rotary Vice. Then, using Danville flat waxed nylon thread on a bobbin, I tie in feathers that are 2.5 – 3.0 inches in length. Sometimes I will tie in a little sparkle or flash tinsel as well. When finished, I put a coat of super glue over the threads. I put the hook back onto the popper and it is ready for action. BIG action!

In my testing, adding white saddle hackles to my poppers, has increased hook-up rates on BIG bass by as much as 30%! Sometimes, the number has creeped to 50%!!! Smaller fish tend to leave the popper alone, but the BIG bass can not resist a popper with those long, white saddle hackles. We have landed huge striped bass to 45” inches on light tackle, in skinny water, with these poppers. The amazing part for me is, the BIG bass are usually swimming right along with smaller fish, and we never have any idea they are there – until the water explodes on the popper!

Its all in the hackle. I have watched these big bass come up behind one of my poppers with saddle hackle, and just nuzzle it. When you pop the popper and stop, the hackle moves and flutters ever-so-slowly and that is the secret. BIG bass pause, the hackle fludders, and WHAM!!! Fish On!

So, liven up your poppers this season with long, white, saddle hackles and start finding those BIG bass swimming with the little ones, that you never knew were there…!

Capt. David Bitters

Baymen Guide Service, Inc. (781) 934-2838 e-mail: baymencharters@gmail.com web: www.baymencharters@gmail.com

*Guiding On Massachusetts South Shore Waters For 18 Years*

The Cape Cod Canal had a major striped bass blitz yesterday. Macks came into the east end and top-water plugging action lit up!

Today, at 4:00am, it was raining torrential and we had to cancel our morning trip on the bay. Two inches of rain! I did glass the bay and found a big pod of fish just waiting for us… )

Stay Posted:

Capt. Dave, The Baymen

(781) 934-2838 baymencharters@gmail.com www.baymencharters.com

photo by Noah Lydiard

FRIDAY, May 4th: Launched the boat at 5:35am to a light South-South West wind, Overcast but good visibility. Tide was dead low, we figured we would scout around until the tide turned to catch incoming; birds and bait were abundant but no fish. We headed down channel toward Bug, across Saquish rips and around Kingston Channel still no fish.

About 1 hour after incoming tide we spotted the birds working a small pod just West of Bug light, from 6:45 until 10:45 it was “lights-out” fishing. We ran to 4-5 completely separate pods of fish ranging from 28-29” “cookie-cutter” fish to pods of larger fish in the 30-32” class; almost all with fresh sea lice and beautiful stripes!

Earlier pods of fish/birds were skittish to the extent that you would get 3, maybe 4 casts in and the action would vanish and reappear 100 yds away. As things settled in later in the am big feeding frenzy would hold to the extent that you could catch 5-6 fish! We threw Yo Zuri Crystal minnows, Rapalas, and Storm shads all with success on a SLOW retrieve with a few “jerks.” We finished the day at a holding pod of birds and breaking fish at the Red #8 can where we boated 5 more fish, total for the day 22 fish, 10 keepers. We harvested 4 and will enjoy the first of the season Stripah on the grill tonight!!

Much to our surprise there were only 2 other boats fishing the bay 1-fly caster with multiple double hook-ups and 1 father-son live lining macks also with bent rods.

Thanks for all you do, see you on the Bay!

-Tight lines, Marc P Hayes

We were socked in with fog on the Bay on Saturday afternoon, but it certainly didn’t affect the bite much!  Very limited visibility so we didn’t see nor go in search of surface feeds and I decided to simply work our spots and see what we could find around the area.  I got a little nervous when I got to my first spot and found water that was just about 51 degrees, which I thought was a little on the cool side, but within 10 casts or so I got tight with a nice 31” bass.  A few additional missed hits there so there were definitely fish in the area, but the monster tides around made for a lot of loose grass on the surface and picking it up every retrieve made for a difficult surface presentation so we decided to move on to the next spot. 

Next spot the water was around 52.5 and there was a mixed bag of fish- we picked up 2 very nice keeper sized fish (32” and 34”) and a slew of hits, swipes, and catches of some very ambitious/hungry/delusional 10-14” micros who were voraciously attacking both 7.5” and 9” sluggos…didn’t seem to be too many of the keeper size class of fish in the area so after 45 minutes or so we decided to slide back down to our starting grounds and hope the grass has pushed out a bit…ended up picking up a fat healthy 32” and my buddy dropped another quality fish, but not much after that, so we decided to go do some exploring.

Ran out to Clarks to try to work some reliable structure, but I didn’t like our chances as we approached as I was seeing water temps steady in the 49.5 range, but the spot looked very fishy (beautiful moving water, nice rips & seams) at the time so we decided to give it a shot.  With the monster tides it seemed like a ton of micros were doing everything they could to hold on structure in ambush locations and we found a nice slug of cooperative micros that were fresh arrivals covered in lice.  We must have caught a good 15 mini bass in the 10-14” range here over the next 45 minutes with a couple more quality 25-27.5” class fish in the mix that made for good sport when they got out in to the open moving water

Grand total of around 25 fish in less than 3 hours on the water- 4 keepers up to 34”, 2 nice schoolies and a mess load of micros- good to see the different classes of fish around this year, but hoping to see some of the larger “gurls” moving into the area very soon!

The Baymen start our charters in earnest this week!

Follow Capt. Dave’s daily fishing reports right here, as well as on our Facebook pages. You can also catch The Baymen Fishing Reports in the Patriot Ledger, The Worcester Telegram-Gazette, and other social media outlets.

Capt. Dave’s Baymen Fishing Reports cover the South Shore, and from Boston to Cape Cod, with a heavy concentration on Duxbury, Plymouth, and Kingston bay, Massachusetts.

You can also get Capt. Dave’s Baymen Fishing Reports sent directly to your e-mail address. Forward it to Baymen and we will add you to this list.

Stay posted: Its about to get crazy on the bay…!!!

Capt. David Bitters, The Baymen

Baymen Guide Service, Inc. (781) 934-2838 baymencharters@gmail.com

www.baymencharters.com  FB David Bitters, FB Baymen Guide Service, Inc. Baymen Charters

Baymen Productions, the marketing arm of Baymen Guide Service, Inc., is looking for a great sound man for Saturday, May 12th. Three wires on three anglers, on the Massachusetts coast. Call or e-mail if interested.

Capt. Dave, The Baymen

(781) 934-2838 baymencharters@gmail.com

Greetings from The Baymen!

I did not fish this morning, instead, opted to spend it on turkey stand. I got to my stand an hour before daylight and spooked something just ahead of me in the dark. I turned on my headlamp, and numerous sets of glowing eyes were all around me – Coyotes! They would not leave and walked all around me so I climbed up a small tree and watched. They kept their distance, but would come up behind and in front of me and then slink back into the darkness. I kept turning off and on my headlamp to catch a glimpse of them. At first light, they all dissapeared and I climbed down. A rather intense hour on turkey stand this morning! Saw two hens and a massive Tom later in the morning, but not luck on the Tom. Heard five gobbles all morning.

Fishing Updates:

POWDER POINT BRIDGE – Spoke with Santa a short time ago and he landed and released two small bass this morning.

MACKS – Yesterday, I spoke with High Rod and he got into macks out front and came back into the bay and live-lined them. Small keepers slammed them as soon as they were dropped over the side.

BIGGEST SO FAR – The biggest striped bass on my boat so far this season is a 37” incher, taken on the fly.

BLUES – Two days ago,  bluefish to seven pounds were caught in the Cape Cod Canal.

That’s the short update at the moment… More to follow. Lots going on. Stay posted:

Capt. David Bitters

Baymen Guide Service, Inc. (781) 934-2838 baymencharters@gmail.com www.baymencharters.com