Thursday January 7th 2016

Capt. Mike reported a good day of cod fishing again today along with an enthusiastic turnout of fishers responding to some brilliant early winter weather. Picture perfect day weather wise and the cod fish were on the feed. The cod fish are moving around A LOT!! Chasing mackerel squid and herring which move around even more. When the fish are stacked up under the boat like on a few drifts today the rods bend up and down and all around. Cod fish tallies were wildly variable from fisher to fisher but there were a good half dozen or more fishers who limited out without breaking a sweat and plenty of others who were very close and a lot more who had a half dozen or so apiece. When four seasoned mates are still filleting back at the dock it has been a good day and a lot of cod have been taken out of circulation.There were however those with less and in a couple cases a lot less but the vast majority of folks went home with at least a few cod fish today. All nice green market size fish today same as yesterday and the biggest fish was in the very low teens just like yesterday. Not quite as many shorts today but still a decent amount. The pool honors today went to longtime regular Ron Humphrey from North Kingstown RI with a fine green cod estimated to be about twelve pounds. Some fishers had as many as a dozen nice mackerel apiece and some of the mackerel were upwards to a pound in weight which are some of the biggest mackerel this fisher has seen in quite some time. Some ocean perch today but not as many as we had been seeing. Both bait and jigs produced on the cod fish but properly worked jig/teaser combos probably had the highest scores overall. Some old school fishers on board today using infamous red gill teasers and the red gill teasers catch as well as they did when they were an artificial cod tackle staple 25-30 years ago. A few old school sea line Diawa reels on board as well today, again nice to them still in use! A group of fishers from NJ put on a nice cod jigging clinic in the stern today and a shout out also to Orlando (Lucky) from Stamford CT who did a fine job swinging the iron clam up in the bow. There was truly some exceptional rod handlers on board today who worked very well with other fishers and made excellent use of the rail space available. Well done gentlemen. Some unmentionables too but after a daybreak appearance they swam away some place else. Some pictures from the past two trips courtesy of a longtime Frances Fleet cod enthusiast. Tomorrow we set sail again at 5 am with Capt. Mike aboard the Lady Frances. The office will be open no later than 330 am for ticket sales.