Fishing the Nantucket Inshore Classic
by Dave Beaumont
If you are going to be on Nantucket this fall between September 15 and October 13 and you like to fish, then you don’t want to miss the 2nd Annual Nantucket Inshore Classic Fishing Tournament, which will be going on during these four weeks. Only entering its second year of existence, this event will eventually become one of the premier fishing contests in the northeast. Martha's Vineyard has had its popular Vineyard Derby for many years—our contest is a smaller, but similar one, that should grow with popularity as time goes by.
During the four weeks there are weekly and overall prizes for catching bluefish, bass, false albacore, and bonito. There are three divisions to choose to fish...beach, boat and fly rod, along with a junior division for kids 16 and under. The cost to enter is $50, which includes an opening and closing party at the Anglers Club, use of the club during the tournament, a long sleeve t-shirt, and it is tax deductible. Kids are free. All the proceeds go to the Anglers Club Scholarship Fund for Nantucket students. The Nantucket Tackle Center, Barry Thurstons Tackle Center, Cross Rip Outfitters, and Bill Fisher Tackle are all teamed up with The Anglers Club to make this truly an all-island event. Contest rules, weigh-in instructions, and other details are posted at an “Inshore Classic 2007” link at the top of the Nantucket Anglers Club website: www.nantucketanglersclub.com.
Early last September, I was talking with Barry Thurston, who owns Barry Thurston Tackle, when he mentioned this new tournament to me. The opening party last year was held the night before the tournament started at the Anglers Club, and there was a lot of excitement around the room. They were selling raffle tickets, so feeling lucky I bought a few (I won twice!). One of the first prizes being raffled off was a huge fillet knife, that could have easily been mistaken for a small sword. The crowd got a huge laugh when Dana Howard’s son Trent won the knife. Of course Dana assured everyone that he would be the one using it. The next item raffled off was a twin to the first knife. This time everyone in the place was laughing as Dana’s son Trent again won the prize. The next day Dana was able to use the knife, as he caught a decent bass that would not only take the weekly prize but also led the shore division for three weeks.
2006 Nantucket Inshore Classic’s Junior Shore Division Winner Jake Flynn and his Dad with an 8lb. 13.4oz. False Albacore.
Last fall, overall, the fishing was down both in size and in numbers. Not a person I know thought the fishing was good. The good news is that 2007 has been a good year so far, a whole notch better than it was last year. Each fish caught was appreciated. I’m not sure if it was the lack of big bait or just an overall low bait count. Out at Great Point, the fishing was up and down, including the normally consistent bluefish.
A continuing problem out at Great Point the last few years has been the number of seals. There were plenty of seals around last year but they seemed to be extra hungry. On one very slow morning of fishing, three different people hooked up with fish only to have a seal take it as it neared the shore. I have heard tales of seals stealing a fish on very rare occasions, but I have personally take over a thousand fish from shore at Great Point and have never had a seal bother one of them.
My long-time fishing pal and personal lucky charm, Dr. Jon, came to Nantucket to visit at the end of the first week of the 2006 Inshore Classic. There were some albies out at Great Point, so we headed out there to see if we could hook one up. There were a lot of cars and fisherman spread out around the area and as we neared the Point, we spotted a man with a fish on, so we stopped there to try our luck. Just a couple of casts into it, I hooked up to a hard fighting fish that could only be a false albacore. After a good battle, I was able to land the fish and it looked to be a nice one near ten pounds. I knew this was a fish with contest potential so I put it in my cooler.
As we fished on, Jon hooked up with a pretty good bluefish, which is not common, as often there is a mingling of different fish in the schools out there. Just after the sun set, I decided to change lures to a striper-attracting plug ,as I didn’t think we would get any more albies. About a minute later Jon hooked up with a drag testing albie in the 7- to 8-pound range. Being the fishing genius that I am, I quickly changed from a Hopkins with a bucktail back to a long Deadly Dick. Usually I cast these out and retrieve them immediately, but I decided to let it sink to the bottom this time, in case anyone was down there. When you have you lucky charm with you, it’s hard to do any wrong and after just a couple cranks of the reel I was on to a good fish that was not an albie. As I got the fish into the wash of the surf on my 10-pound test line, I could see that it was a bass. Total luck… but it still count. The fish was 37 inches and weighed 17.5 pounds. We fished a little longer before deciding to call it quits and go get some dinner. On the way home we stopped at the Anglers Club to weigh in my two fish. The bass, though not huge, put me into 3rd place at that point for the shore division. The false albacore weighed in at hefty 9.8 pounds and it won the first week of the shore division and led for almost 3 weeks. Jon’s luck didn’t wear off there—he came on my Sunday morning beach charter and my clients got 7 albies and a bluefish.
With the fish bite being slow last fall, any decent fish in one of the four categories (bluefish, bonito, bass, and false albacore) could potentially win a week or even be an overall best fish. With beach, boat, and fly divisions, there were a number of options to pursue. The 9.8 albie I caught the first week of the contest held up in first place, into the 3rd week, when a 12 plus pounder blew me out of the lead and eventually won the albie shore division. To give you an idea how slow the fishing was, I had landed 17.5 pound bass the first week, and it hung around in third place for a while—the eventual winner was only just over 22 pounds.
While fishing for false albacore in early October, I lost a couple in a row one morning and was starting to get frustrated. Other than some mid-September fish, it seemed hard to catch anything, and I was casting like a madman. At the tip of Great Point the seals were taking any hooked fish and eating them before they ever made it to shore. Among the fish I did land was a 2-inch bluefish, a 3-inch scup and a 6-inch northern sennett (lizard fish) all on 5-inch Deadly Dicks. If you are catching fish this size on a lure that big then they must be pretty hungry, which is exactly why I think the amount of bait was probably down. “If you keep casting, eventually a fish will find your lure” became my motto and finally I hauled in a real fish, a nearly 8-pound bluefish. That fish won that week from shore for blues and ended up on the top three.
The fourth category, bonito, proved to be nearly impossible. Hard-fishing Jen Decker, was the only person to weigh one in. On the final day of the tourney, Friday the 13th, I decided to dunk an eel or two in search of that elusive big striper. Jen happened to be fishing that same stretch of beach, and she told me that only category she had been blanked on was bass. No keeper, and she had been trying hard. As we were talking I had a pick up that immediately felt like a bluefish strike. I set the hook quickly and, since I was not using a metal leader, I could only hope for a hook up in the side of the mouth or my line would break. Playing it gingerly, it was a few minutes before it was up to shore and it was just about there… when the line finally chafed though and parted. What else should I have expected for Friday the 13th? Jen told me that she had lost a keeper bass the day before, right near shore, but that didn’t ease my frustration. As time went on, neither of us caught anything or even had a nibble.
That was the only day I fished during that last week as I had hurt myself the week before and was limping a bit. The next night was the closing party and only a couple of hours before I went to it, I found out that my limping was not going to stop until I had surgery (the next week) and it was also the 5 year anniversary of the death of one of my lifelong fishing buddies. Needless to say I was bummed, but wasn’t going to miss the raw bar at the party, and I wanted to see the final tally board. To my amazement, the fishing was so slow that the overall totals were low and somehow my three fish total weight of blue, bass, and albie was enough to win the overall shore division.
With this year’s fishing being very good so far, the 2007 Inshore Classic will probably beat out most of 2006’s totals. See you out there. Good luck!
