Fishing for Striped Bass at Cape Cod's Billingsgate Shoals

Some of the most productive striped bass fishing grounds in Massachusetts lie over the vast sand flats and shoals of Cape Cod Bay and Nantucket Sound.

Here's a look at one area, Billingsgate Island and Shoals, accessible from Orleans and Wellfleet, where schools of stripers 34" and longer feed in such large numbers that commercial striped bass fishermen and recreational fishermen alike rarely have difficulty meeting their respective daily bag limits.

Lying roughly five miles south of Provincetown and hemmed in by Cape Cod National Seashore holdings at Jeremy Point and Great Island, Billingsgate's flats are accessible to anglers in tin skiffs and kayaks or larger powerboats. At low tide, many of the fishery's shallows can be sightfished on foot - good reason to wear polarized sunglasses and neoprene.

The fishery covers much of the southeastern corner of the 35-mile-long inner forearm of lower Cape Cod, offshore of tiny villages uncluttered by the commercialism and overdevelopment that plague so much of the upper and south Cape. Swept by tides coursing in from the veritable open-ocean striped bass holding pens at Stellwaggen Bank off Provincetown, Billingsgate is best fished for the large along the edges of its shallows where the shoals drop off into deeper water. The area also sees an influx of bluefin tuna during September, October and November.

To fish Billingsgate you'll need three types of gear: deepwater trolling rigs like tubes-and-worms; jigs such as the locally known hoochie; and any number of soft plastics such as sluggos or shads. Bring along a few metal spoons like kastmasters also.

At low tide the area's western flats nearly triple their width, forming vast, intricate pools and hollows covered with gin-clear water running toward deeply-cut littoral channels. Off Billingsgate Island and Jeremy Point proper, both of which emerge a few hours into low tide, best to use deep-trolling tactics: tubes and jigs on lead core or mono or wire. The dropoffs are easy to spot: look for the serpentine boat channels marked by red nun and green can buoys. Depth drop-offs are abrupt.