I guess the part about "last post in awhile" was a lie. I honestly expected to struggle for awhile before connecting with any decent fish here, but my first two days of fishing in Massachusetts were pretty successful. Day 1 I got off the plane at 6am and was too tired to get any work done but the 20oz Dunkies I slammed before getting in the rental car ruled out sleep as an option. Decided to buy a trusty walmart ugly stik and some squid and tried a random spot off the rocks. Started immediately catching scup. Really fun fish; they fight a lot harder than spotties and are incredibly aggravating to hook. I got bites literally every cast for hours and only managed five, but they were all legal size or close to it so maybe it was just the little guys that were cleaning me out. Came back a couple days later with smaller hooks and didn't have an easier time hooking them. Also caught a bunch of black sea bass; all but one were tiny. What a cool looking fish.
I also had some fun catching snapper blues off the rocks. The guy at the tackle shop told me to use a popping cork with a little piece of surgical tube at the end. Felt pretty stupid when I first started fishing it but once I found some schools blowing up on microbait I started catching them. Too small to put much of a bend in the rod but still pretty fun to watch them boil on the trailer behind the popping cork, and I heard that at this size they're much better eating than adult bluefish but I didn't bring any ice or a bucket with me and I still had the rental car. It was also cool to see how aggressively they were feeding on bait; I can only imagine how exciting it is to see adults doing that.
The highlight of the first day (and of the week) was when I tried casting a swimbait in this harbor that I found. I didn't get any bites but there was tons of bait and a striper followed my swimbait to the rocks. I went back in the evening and followed the school of peanut bunker as it moved its way down the rocks with the tide until I hooked into a striper. Soon after, a pack rolled through and started exploding on the bait, sometimes jumping out of the water or pushing it all the way to the shoreline. Caught a few more and missed some other bites. Super exciting to watch packs of four or five fish all hit a bait school at the same time and have them crush swimbaits being burned in along the surface. Pretty crazy that a similar spot in sd would only have tiny spotties, sometimes corvina/short barracuda, and the occasional halibut. I tried again last night and didn't get any but got followed again, so they're still around. Gotta figure out what was different about the first day; right now what stands out to me is that it was slack tide right at sunset and there was a huge rainstorm later that night.
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