Fishing the Brewster Flats Off Cape Cod, Massachusetts This Summer

ON THE FLATS AT BREWSTER: I haven't sprinted this much since I was in high school. And now that I've stepped on a razor clam I've got a cut in the sole of my foot about the width of the edge of a quarter. To be out here fishing the flats without footwear is stupid, but I cast again, take another striper, land it, lip it, drop it, and cast once more. Over the years, I guess, it's inevitable that I become built less for speed than comfort. But it's not inevitable that I grow stupider about keeping my feet protected. Luckily for me it required neither speed, endurance, nor much in the way of brains to get out here from the fine surfaced ramp at Rock Harbor in Orleans.

So here I am, running around again on the low-tide flats off Brewster, at Cape Cod a day after a full moon, fishing rod in hand, kayak beached a hundred yards away on the edge of a huge sand flat, my attention focused on a school of striped bass that has managed to get trapped within about a quarter acre of water surrounded by dry sandbars. Drain-tides empty massive swaths of this area about twenty-four times a year, leaving behind, on its flats during season, dozens of shallow embayments in which striped bass get trapped until high tide returns.

This is the first time I've gotten hurt here. The fishing - first bluefish, then stripers feeding in shin-deep water -has been quite good, A couple dozen schoolies, a handful or rambunctious snapper bluefish. The fish rumple the sheet of water spread over the sand like cats partying on a bed. Bunker and sandeels are hopping around like popcorn.

Well, forget the cut for another hour, I guess.

Feeds like this occur often on the Brewster Flats during the summer and fall, intensifying in late summer and fall when the fish begin their annual earnest feed-up for their migration back to the waters of the mid-Atlantic. The feeds often persist for hours. Fish with small spoons, soft platics, or plugs and you're llikely to catch several dozen fish during feeds that persist until well after the tide begin to flood.