For a few glorious weeks in the late spring and early summer, large sea bass—which usually dwell over deep-water structure—invade Buzzards Bay, feeding and spawning along the way. With much of the action happening in depths less than 30 feet, anglers have the opportunity to target black sea bass in Buzzard Bay with freshwater bass tackle. And with a combination of sporty gear, big fish, easy accessibility for small boats and kayakers, and the promise of white, tasty fillets, it’s no wonder that this humble bottom fish draws in anglers from New York to Maine.
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Many sea bass anglers, both visiting and local, beeline for the biggest, most dramatic piece of structure in the Buzzards Bay—Cleveland Ledge.
Originally named Pocasset Ledge, this shoal off Falmouth was the favorite fishing spot of President Grover Cleveland in the 1890s. He spent enough time fishing there that the structure was renamed in his honor after his second, nonconsecutive term of office in 1897. The article “Persistent Sportsman” in a 1956 Issue of Sports Illustrated suggested that Cleveland fished Buzzards Bay for bluefish and weakfish, and it makes no mention of the black sea bass that attract crowds to his eponymous ledge today.
While the structure does hold big numbers of sea bass, intense fishing pressure culls out the keepers and scatters the fish soon after the season opener. For that reason, the captains who fish the bay on a daily basis, looking to fill limits for their clients, always avoid Grover’s favorite fishing hole.
With more anglers fishing the bay for sea bass in recent years, fishing has gotten tougher. While limits of 20-inch-plus fish were once a given, in the last couple seasons, limits of any size fish have been the exception rather than the rule. That potential still exists, but you have to break out of the fleet.
“Fish react to heavy pressure,” said Captain Brian Coombs of Get Tight Sportfishing. Coombs targets Buzzards Bay sea bass from the season opener in May and into June, until the striper bite in his home waters of Boston heats up.
“There is so much overlooked structure in Buzzards Bay,” explained Coombs, who swings wide of the Cleveland Ledge fleet, using his electronics to look for varied bottom and schools of bait. A little extra time poking around can yield big results, such as the day Coombs found a pile of 21-inch-and-up sea bass, and few smaller fish, in a small area of rocks without another boat in sight.
“There might be a hundred boats on Cleveland Ledge at the start of the season,” said twenty-one-year-old Captain Cam Faria of Cambo Charters. Instead of following the crowd fishing closer to the Cape Cod Canal, he favors the waters off Westport, where, in addition to lighter fishing pressure, he also finds more variable depths and structure, which gives him more options for finding fish when they aren’t stacked in the 25- to 30-foot depths.
Depth changes are a major part of the sea bass program for Captain Ross Walkinshaw of Cape Cod Charter Guys.
“Sea bass like to feed up a slope,” said Walkinshaw, who sets up drifts over ledges in 30 to 40 feet of water to present his rigs to sea bass waiting in ambush on the deeper side. This approach, Walkinshaw says, keeps him away from the rocks, snags, and often, other boats.
Once a school of sea bass is located, the next challenge is selecting for the biggest fish in the school. Springtime sea bass in Buzzards Bay range from 10 to 24 inches, with fish at the lower end of that range greatly outnumbering the larger fish. Add in the springtime influx of scup and sea robins, and you could spend day fighting through plagues of smaller fish instead of putting keepers on ice.
Faria combats baitstealers by avoiding the use of bait altogether. In deeper water or when the drift is fast, he focuses on sea bass using a diamond jig with a teaser, but when conditions allow, his favorite technique is a ¾-ounce epoxy-style jig. He uses one with a single hook, like the JoeBaggs Resin Jig, because the single hook limits snagging bottom. He opts for natural colors like white, olive, and amber.
Coombs takes a different approach by rigging up with baits that are too big for most undersized fish to eat. He fishes a jig and teaser, tipping the jig with a 6-inch Berkley Gulp Grub and using an 8-inch Berkley Gulp Grub as the teaser. Any sea bass taking a swing at an 8-inch bait is likely to be a big one. He likes bright colors, using pink for his jig and chartreuse for his teaser.
Unless his clients want a mixed bag of scup and sea bass, Walkinshaw also leaves the bait at the dock. Like Faria, he uses larger epoxy-style jigs, namely the 3-inch, 1-ounce Game On Exo in white, silver, and electric chicken colors. In deeper water, or on days when it’s harder to hold bottom, he opts for the classic diamond jig with tube tail.
For presentation, Coombs wants to keep his rig as close to vertical as possible. “If I can hold bottom with two ounces, I’ll bump up to three to keep the rig straight up and down.” To fish these, Coombs prefers a conventional reel, especially one with a thumb bar that enables easy drop-backs to hold bottom. Coombs uses rods in the 7-foot range as they make it easier to swing fish into the boat.
Faria likes using his albie setup, a lighter spinning rod that lets the sea bass show off their fighting ability.
Walkinshaw uses a mix of spinning and conventional gear, but looks for a rod with a lighter tip, but plenty of backbone. The rods he uses for jigging stripers and blues often do double-duty for sea-bassing.
Between strong currents and often unrelenting southwest wind, sea bass seekers on Buzzards Bay regularly deal with fast drift speeds. Keeper-sized fish are often balled up in small areas, so a fast drift offers only a fleeting chance at the bigger sea bass before you’re back to shorts and scup.
To keep his rigs in front of the big fish longer, Coombs deploys a drift sock, looking to get his drift down between 0.5 to 1 mile per hour. It can be the difference between a limit of 20-plus-inchers and scratching out a handful of fish just over the minimum size.
2024 Massachusetts Sea Bass Regulations
Season: May 18 to September 3
Minimum Size: 16.5”
Season: 4 Fish
With the spawn over and water temperatures rising, sea bass begin exiting Buzzards Bay in the second half of June, returning to deep-water structure. Faria follows them out of the bay, all the way to Noman’s Island by mid- to late July. Walkinshaw, too, does a lot of deep-water sea-bassing in mid-summer, dropping diamond jigs to structure in the 70-to 90-foot depths south of Martha’s Vineyard, where the bycatch includes big bluefish, sharks, and even bluefin tuna.
Cooling temperatures send the sea bass deeper and further offshore in the late fall, where they’ll ride out the winter before charging back into Buzzards Bay the following spring.
Book a Sea Bass Charter
Captain Brian Coombs; Get Tight Sportfishing
gettightsportfishing.com
Captain Cam Faria; Cambo Fishing Charters
cambofishingcharters.com
Captain Ross Walkinshaw; Cape Cod Charter Guys
capecodcharterguys.com
Jigging for Big Black Sea Bass
