Kayak Fishing for Bonito Off Chatham, Cape Cod

It's mid-August, blistering hot, and I'm crashing around in my sea kayak in a hard southwesterly that's heaving chopwater against my bow: Ka-THUMP. Ka-THUMP. Three bonito flashing by in the shallows have already broken off three of my swivels, and I'm down to my last slug-go.

This is the last time I ever try to save a buck with cheap swivels, I say to myself.

open my knife, cut from a spare tube-and-worm a stronger stainless swivel and, tying the leader to the swivel, poke the swivel through the jighead to which the slug-go is attached. Tilting my Ugly Stik over my shoulder I flick the rod tip forward towards the swell breaking on the shallows. I begin a fast retrieve. I feel a hard yank. I hear the REEEEEEEE-ERRRRRRRRR! zzzzzzzzzzing! of the drag on my reel.

I hope the swivel holds. My rod snaps forward. 17-pound test mono spin off in a straight line away, away, AWAY from my kayak, then angles sharply, crosses my bow, then -WHOA! - goes slack when the bonito abruptly turns and charges the boat.

If it's summer off Monomoy Island, Cape Cod, it's time for bonito, one of the tastier, speedier pelagics to visit Cape Cod during the summer months. These speedy fish, the size and shape of a slimmed-down football, take runs on light tackle that can spoil the angler's taste for much else, keeper stripers included. Sometimes you'll see schools of bonito rounding up shoaled baitfish off Monomoy, especially off its western shallows where the island's sprawling flats drop off into deeper waters west of the island's abandoned lighthouse [link to kmz file].

To fish for bonito from a kayak, here are some pointers.

One way to hook bonito is to give fast chase in a fast boat. One of the more common methods, herding, requires paddling along at about four knots off-center of a breaking school and casting light gear on-the-move. Breaking bonito schools are often quite large -for every breaking fish there are a dozen or more below - so don't worry if you're not right on top of the school, which will tend to spook them.

Casting at a large breaking school from a paddled kayak poses problems, though. Yes your long, fast boat will get you to a breaking school more quickly than a slower and wider sit-on. Problem is, plenty of anglers have even faster powerboats and an eye for breaks just as good as yours. Working a large school in open water off places like Handkerchief or Stone Horse Shoals, you're likely to have to vie for position with a none-too-small fleet of bow-riders and center consolers. Some days, for example, at such well-known islands bonito playgrounds as Lobsterville or Cataumet, the scrum of powerboats competing on the water in chase of a breaking bonito school can be as thick and frenzied as the bonito schools themselves. Yes, the method works: gunning, turning, scissoring, wheeling. Yet it can be a gong show, classic throw-the-cat-into-the-dog pound scenario, with skippers wheeling and gunning and turning and shouting at one another.

A better option for the kayaker is to hunt down a school you can keep to yourself - pretty easy if you pay attention to the clues that indicate an about-to-feed, about-to-break school. One place to watch for these clues is the three mile-long stretch of flats and shoals that lie off the west side of south Monomoy Island, in that area proximal to the cedar-stake fish weir and the abandoned lighthouse.

Fast Birds Track Fast Schools
The first clue is one we all know of: diving birds, of which Monomoy has plenty and more.

The key is to watch not the large and frantic flocks that wheel and plummet over bluefish or stripers, but, rather, the smaller, faster-moving flocks cruising at high speed. Unlike feeding flocks, a handful o birds flying fast and low over the flats often means there's a fast-moving school of bonito racing along below them.

If the waters over which the birds are flying lie parallel to Monomoy's western shallows, it's time for you to get moving. Follow. Chances are this small advance flock of birds is tracking a submerged school. Check your chart and depth sounder for the shapes and contours of the shallows you are on or are about to approach. Likely the flock has discovered a school that has chased a baitfish school into one of the many channels off Monomoy's western shallows. Shift your eyesight forward for a glimpse of a shifting baitfish cloud. Don't deploy gear for now. Simply follow. If you're in a fast longboat, you'll appreciate the purchase, especially if it's a roundbottom that won't windowshade when you turn hove-to Monomoy's prevailing chop.

Wait for the fore squad of bonito to break the water's surface. All hell is about to break lose. The breaking bonito will be moving fast. The remainder of the school will be feeding in a moment, too; once you're near, it's time to make your first cast out. Cut towards the breaking school, cast a soft plastic or Hopkins or Kastmaster, and retrieve with hard and fast jerks and pulls. The melee begins in earnest now: bonito and birds kicking up spray as the bonito ball up, back, and wheel. bonito and birds whacking the water and fluttering up spray and creating waterbursts as the bonito ball up, back, and wheel. Stay in the midst of it, upwind if you can, so that you drift into the school. Cast. Retrieve with jerks and spurts.

Because you have discovered this breaking school in waters too shallow for powerboats, you'll have the school to yourself.
What's nice about a fast longboat is that long and seaworthy kayaks allow you to close in shallow areas like Monomoy's shoals, where baitfish tend to get trapped, but also seakayak they have the hull speed and ableness to handle Nantucket Sound's steep and heavy chop, and get you back to the put-in, whether that be Hardings Beach or Morris Island, faster than a shorter and stubbier Prowler, Pungoe, and so on.

Common Flat
One area worth trying first time out is Common Flat, off the north end of the west side of the south island. The spot has many advantages. First, given Nantucket Sound's prevailing southwesterly summer winds, the area often appears too shallow and inaccessible, with its heaving swell and constantly breaking chop, to the skippers of larger powerboats. Simply by glancing down over the gunwale you can see which sections of a flat is fed by the channels which lead to the deeper offshore waters west and south. It's through these channels and inlets that the bonito pulse. The inlets and shallows rarely let you down. Forage funnels into them. Bonito (and blues and stripers) follow. If you don't see any tell-tale 3-4 bird flocks, simply blind cast into the flats' broader depressions and deeper hollows.

Beautiful Fish
These semi-pelagic fish, with their long and thin keels between their mid-sections and tails, are iridescently beautiful in the boat. The visit the waters of Monomoy and Nantucket Sound from seas much further south. Quivering back and forth, their thin sickle tails provide the enormous propulsion which gives these tunoids their speed and power. Strikes come with abrupt force. Runs are long and numerous.

Because their strikes are fast and abrupt, 18" shock-style leaders of 30-pound mono are a good choice. So too is a reliable drag that won't seize, stutter, or lock. For lures, try anything wriggly or shiny around 4"-long or so. One reliable and inexpensive choice is the green and blue or chartreuse 4" shad on a 1/2 or 1 oz. jighead, a versatile lure also effective for blues or stripers that may happen to be wandering around, although the shad won't last but a bluefish or two. Half-ounce Kastmasters work well, too, as will live or frozen butterfish if you prefer trolling.

If you're a fly fisherman, you'll do well with an 8-weight and white bunnys; likewise try chartreuse and white Hi-Ties; sand or silverside imitations; or bullet or cone bucktails.

On the table these little tuna, averaging between 4 and 8 pounds, are one of the tastier inshore game fish, even if in Florida anglers view them as hardly worth the trouble. Bonito make good sashimi; their broiled taste is akin to a cross between swordfish and tuna. Problem is, once you hook a bonito you may end up like many others: spoiled for anything else.

copyright 2007/Adam Bolonsky/northamericankayakfishing.blogspot.com