Backing up, the full-day Nantucket fluke runs Sunday and Monday ranged from good to outstanding. Sunday had the better drifting scenario north of Nantucket, and quite a few quality flatties in the 3- to 5-pound range and a good number of bigger stuff in the 6- to 7-plus range. Among those who scored were Alberto Matinez of Worcester with a 7.5, Eric Griffin of Rosedale, MA with a 6-plus, and Al Rende of Pelham, NY with another near-seven. Sea bass rounded out the catch both days. Blues have not yet become major players, but a few cross the rails most trips.

Monday, fishing was made a bit trickier by a very brisk drift, thanks to 20-plus knots of W to NW wind; best results on Monday went to those with the right gear to tend bottom-light braid and lightweight, ultrasensitive sticks, or the opposite, the heavy sticks capable of handling significant loads of metal to keep baits down. When the drift is absolutely cranking, as it was on Monday, it often helps to streamline your rigs, replacing thick bucktails and other not-so-hydrodynamic features to keep the rigs from scoping out and riding off the bottom. Sometimes, a simple, good, old-fashioned one-hook drift rig with some modest-sized bait is best for the job. All the pretty colors and ultra-nautical teasers and giant-slaying baits are about useless if you can’t keep them on the floor.

Capt. Joe Weinberg had on weekend scup-sea bass charter that took him over toward the Vineyard. Word was that his patrons had plenty of scup and a nice mess of sea bass-including a couple of corkers-to fill the freezers back home. Research set-aside permits allow the Helen H Fleet to continue pursuing scup at their spring bag limit until the quota is filled.

Tuna reports remain very favorable, both the bluefins out east and the yellowfins to the south.

The Sunday Nantucket Fluke Trip stopped a bit short of the island in an open-bottom area that’s holding a pretty substantial body of quality slabs. Green feathers, rigged in a variety of ways (ahead of fish balls or bucktails, as stand-offs on high-low rigs, or as single hooks on long leaders) seemed to outperform other offerings, though not for any reason Joe could explain. Predominant forage of late has been small red swimming crabs, so go figure…

Among many other quality fish over the last seven days, a few young anglers got on the board on the half-day grounds: 13-year-old Joseph Flores from Albany, NY stuck a near-6-pound fish over the weekend, While 7-year-old Joseph Madore of Bridgewater, MA joined the “Joes for Joes” list with a nice 6-pounder. Matt Sneider of Mansfield, the only non-Joe on Capt. Joe’s short list of Joe fluke by fellas named Joe, had a 6.5. As hectic as things have been, quite a few more nice fish and the anglers responsible for their undoing slipped through the cracks, but Huck has promised to keep a more thorough record in the coming week.

In other news, the striped bass bite off Monomoy has picked back up a few rungs, with the vast majority of the action during ebb tides, when cooler ocean water from the east pushes inside the three-mile line, filling the inside rips with bait and bass. School tuna activity is still pretty solid out east and in the Bay; Huck was preparing to send the Sea Hawk out for some recon when I caught him Sunday afternoon. Further from home, the yellowfin bite has been explosive at times along the edge of the shelf. From the recent intel, it appears there’s a ton of krill inhabiting a slug of warm water stretched out between Atlantis and Hydro, and some absolute wide-open troll action for the few boats on the scene. With plenty of positive reports from as far west as Toms Canyon, and a wall of cold water east of Hydrographer, we could be in for an explosive September. For advance updates on the tuna schedule, or to solidify a position at the rail, call the office at 508-790-0660.

The Nantucket Fluke trips will continue to sail Sundays and Mondays as crowds warrant, and the half-days will run from 8 to noon, and again from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m.

The Helen attemped a night bluefish run last Thursday night. While the daytime bluefishing is fast-and-furious, it appears top be a daytime-only bite at this point.

Though the H’s fall tuna trips still feel a long way off, early reports from the canyons suggest an absolute lock-and-load troll bite from the Atlantises to Hydrographers over the last two weeks. Several boats had as many as 50 yellowfins in the 40- to 70-pound class in a single day’s trolling; others have found a respectable pick of fish on the night chunking and jigging bite, though the action’s been mostly a wee-hours affair so far, 3 a.m. to first light. Bigeyes have made scattered appearances, but nothing too reliable thus far. It’s certainly not too early to think about booking your rail position for the fall run, which, if the present pattern holds, could see some epic fishing as bait dumps offshore, the breaks become more defined and the tuna put on the big feed before the curtain comes down.

Carl Scuderi hefts a 10-plus doormat fluke he brought to net aboard the Fish Hawk at Nantucket.

Weak tides and light winds have continued to thwart the Helen H Fleet’s fluke fishing efforts. Thankfully, the tides have gained some oomph since late last week, lending a a bit more tidal “pull” to the water churning over the sandy high spots off Monomoy-to the extent that the rips are ripping again and the striper fishing is bouncing back from a near standstill last week. The Fish Hawk has been running striper/fluke combos, taking a nice mix of bass to around 35 inches and topping off coolers with some choice flattie fillets when the rip faces collapse and the bass disperse. One of the best fluke taken on the Fish Hawk over the last few days was a doormat just a hair over 10 pounds landed by Carl Scuderi (see photo at top right of this report).

The half-day trips, alternating between the Helen and the Angler during the week, are still leaning on the bumper crop of nice sea bass on the hard pieces around Nantucket Sound to take up slack from tougher going on the slabs. Relatively speaking, the fluke ratio has begun its rebound after a very challenging last week, and once the tides really start hauling again, Capt. Joe Huck will get back to his “plan A” strategy for halfday fluke this season, namely working the conch-pot-studded lanes of open sandy to pea stone bottom, where feed in the form of massive clouds of small swimming crabs support a substantial population of chunky summer flatties.

The last Nantucket Fluke Run scheduled for Monday was a full-day fluke charter, and Huck elected to head a bit further west than he’s been fishing, searching for a better combination of drift conditions and a solid concentration of fluke to work on. Most of the fishing that trip was done in and around tide-swept Muskeget Cut, an area of deeper channel water flanked by very skinny shoal water off the east end of Marthas Vineyard and the west end of Nantucket. While the wind and tide were lined up in that area, patrons in the charter managed to pick away at a mix of keeper and short slabs and some sea bass; when the drift conditions deteriorated, the bite died rapidly. Biggest fluke for the trip were in the 4 to 5-pound class. Capt. Huck was not altogether thrilled with the day’s tally, but that’s the nature of the game: Sometimes, the hunches pay off huge, other times, not so much. Regardless, every run to new (old) grounds fills in another corner of the big picture that is the 2010 fluke hunt.

In other news, Capt. Joe was much more upbeat about the results of a Sunday porgy/sea bass make-up charter with the James Whitten group, who were forced to turn around and run for the barn on their original attempt to get the day in. That first failure to launch was the result of a series of fibs and outright falsehoods advanced by the weatherman (as in, That’s odd: this light-to-variable wind feels suspiciously like 25-to-30). The second attempt worked out much better. Taking advantage once again of the Angler’s raw speed (27-knot cruise) to head for greener pastures, Capt. Walt and crew shot west, bound for Nomans Island, a few miles offshore of Squibnocket, Marthas Vineyard. The fishing was nothing short of outstanding and anyone who maintained focus through the day had no trouble whatsoever plugging all available cooler space with jumbo scup.

Nomans, once used for bombing practice by the US Air Force, is to porgies what Cuttyhunk and Montauk are to striped bass, or what Stellwagen or Georges Bank is to codfish, in history and in real, live porgy production. Capt. Walt’s Hail Mary trip that way a couple weeks back has got everybody thinking about the possibility of extending prime porgy time on the Helen H.” Huck noted his Research Set-Aside permits will let him run these trips without taking a hit on bag limits. The beauty of Nomans is that the scup and, to a lesser extent, the sea bass, start to pile up there right around the time the bite’s cooked in Nantucket Sound, and Huck’s planning to capitalize on that lock-and-load porgy pounding next season.

The first of the Helen’s fall cayon trips are still a long way off, but early reports from the edge indicate some fast-and-furious yellowfin activity, punctuated by large mahis, scattered longfins, occasional bigeyes and some absolute behemoth blue marlin in the warmest parts of the warm-core eddies so far. Perhaps the best news, after last season’s unprecedented numbers of mackerel-size tuna, is the abundance of yellows in the 40- to 60-pound class, with occasional specimens in excess of 80. Capt. Joe and therest of the Helen’s seasoned crew are cautiously optimistic things will hold together right through the dog days. Incidentally, they’re also considering, adding some earlier canyon runs if the interest’s there. Stay tuned for further updates or check the schedule on the site.

Half-day trips will continue this week, sailing 8 a.m. to noon, and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The 7 a.m. to 4ish p.m. Nantucket Fluke trips are scheduled for Sunday and Monday. It’s definitely wise to call ahead for reservations.

Reservations have been surprisingly light on the Sunday/Monday Nantucket Fluke trips, despite very good fishing when the conditions align. Capt. Joe Weinberg on the Fish Hawk had a tough pick on the backside of Nantucket Thursday morning, thanks to wind dead-square against the tide-the boat bobbing in circles like a Clorox bottle as the forces of nature duked it out. That crew still managed a respectable showing of nice slabs, the biggest of the in the 4- to 6-pound class, plus a scattering of sea bass.

Huck is confident the fluking is going to hit stride over the next couple weeks; the strengthening tides as we come off the quarter moon should help the drift conditions significantly.

Water temps in the Sound have skyrocketed, now hovering in the 73- to 74-degree range-the hottest it’s been in a good many seasons. That may have a bit to do with why the Monday Nantucket fluke trip saw such a marked improvement in the fishing. On the south and east sides of the Island, water temps are still cooler at around 67 degrees as of Monday afternoon. Huck was quite satisfied with the quantity and the quality on that run, and said most guys had little trouble filling their five-fish limits. Big fish for that trip scaled around 6 ½ pounds, and there were quite a few others in the 3- to 5-pound range.

The weaker tides gave the guys with lighter set-ups rigged for maximum sensitivity a definite advantage; small, single Spro bucktails tipped with various combinations of strip baits and fish baits accounted for numerous quality slabs as they were cast and retrieved during periods of slower drift. The throwback to keeper ratio on all the fluke trips remains about 50-50.

On a side note, Joe has been very pleased with the fluke bait he’s been able to get this season: bright, 4-inch spearing, fresh-frozen jumbo sand eels and native squid. That stuff will really come into play when waves of bigger fluke begin filtering into the area. Speaking of, Joe explained that Nantucket Sound, unlike most other prime fluke habitats, which typically see bigger fish in the first migratory push, tends to get abundant smaller fish first, then bigger slabs in subsequent slugs. Point is, for those on the hunt for true doormats, the best of the 2010 run still lies ahead.

Striper fishing slowed to a crawl over the weekend, thanks to the deadly combination of weak tides and very warm water. Huck surmised that the superheated Sound waters have pushed the squid and sand eels north and east into cooler water, dragging with them most of the bass. Unfortunately, the outer rips off Monomoy-the ones lying outside the three-mile state-waters line, and, unfortunately, the ones with most of the fish at this point-are off-limits to all striper fishing.

As crowds have increased since the holiday weekend, the Fleet will now be running two half-day trips daily, sailing from 8 a.m. to noon, and again from 1 p.m. to 5. The nine-hour Nantucket runs will continue on Sundays and Mondays, sailing at 7 a.m. and hitting the dock again late-afternoon.

As is always the case, each trip’s fluking success depended largely on what Mother Nature served up by way of drift conditions. On the days when tide and wind lined up, pushing the boat over ground at a decent clip (or one force over-powered the other with similar results), the pick of quality slabs was decent to good. On those days that provided minimal drift, the catch suffered. 

Huck noted he’s been fishing mostly open bottom, focusing his efforts in several areas dotted with conch pots. Asked why, he explained that the conch gear provides two bonuses where the fluking’s concerned. First, the presence of this fixed gear discourages draggers from working the area, affording the fluke there some measure of indirect protection from heavy fishing pressure. Second, Huckmeyer believes the bait bags that hang in the conch pots attract swarms of the small red swimming crabs you’ll often find in flukes’ stomachs during the earlier parts of the slab season. Big fish for the week, caught on Wednesday’s 10 a.m.-to-2 p.m. half-day run, was a 10.3-pound doormat landed by master angler, Ms. Brenda Bodine of Burlington, NJ, on a Plain-Jane rental rod sporting a Plain-Jane drift rig (see photo at end of report). At the time of her catch, the tide was cranking and the Helen was approaching a knot and a half on the drift.

In general, the fluke fishing has yet to get into high gear, but Huck has no complaints about the ratio of keepers to shorts so far. He expects that this season will improve by the week. Due to the Fourth of July holiday and resulting mayhem around Hyannis, the Helen H will be making only one Nantucket fluke run this week, that trip sailing on Monday, July 5, 7 a.m. to 4ish p.m. (though, as most who’ve made these trips with any regularity already know, the boat has been known to put in extra time when fishing has been slow or the bite goes crazy late in the day).

After that outing, the half-days will resume, with the scheduling particulars yet to be carved in stone. Joe thinks they’ll plan to run one 10-to-2 trip per day for the first half of the week, then run two (8 a.m. to noon and again from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.) in the second half. Of course, this tentative line-up is subject to change; call the office to get up-to-the-minute sailing schedules.

On the striper front, the fishing was nothing short of lock-and-load early-week, with charters aboard the Fish Hawk racking up as many as 50 nice stripers per outing. On Wednesday, Carol Ann Huckmeyer took a long-awaited pause from manning the phones and playing Super Mom, and headed out on the Fish Hawk with the girls for their annual bass trip. All told, the six women in that group boated an impressive 35 bass, retaining only their legal limit of course. Proving her street-cred behind the reel, Carol was high-hook with the trip’s biggest lineside, a well-fed cow in the low 30-pound class (see photo, top right). All their fish were taken on shell squids dropped back into the standing waves of several hard-charging rips not far from Monomoy Island off Chatham. This top-water approach to catching bass in bait-filled rips is a mighty exciting alternative to the wire or lead-core trolling tactics so many other southern New England charter boats employ.

The striper fishing has been best on the strength of the west-running ebb tides, which deliver cooler water and large bodies of squid and other baitfish from points further east. Escalating water temps inside have cooled the bite a bit, mainly because the bait has been moving off the beach and out into the rips that lie outside the three-mile state-waters “fence,” beyond which striper fishing is strictly verboten. That situation is likely to change again as the timing of the tides comes back around again. As a side note, the Helen H Fleet’s six-man charter boats frequently adjust sailing times for the striped bass charters to work around tides, leaving earlier or later to give clients every available edge in their cow hunting. There are plenty of prime dates available for July stripers off Monomoy, but now that the Cape’s into the peak of the tourist onslaught, the phone’s ringing off the wall and the white space in the calendar’s disappearing faster by the day. Reservations/questions/comments? 508-790-0660.