Capt. Joe Huck on the Helen H had quite a bit of interesting news over the weekend-on several fronts. At the Angler’s helm Friday and Sunday, Capt. Walt knocked out a couple of the last scheduled porgy trips for the 2010 season, once again taking a long ride for greener pastures well south and west of the Fleet’s traditional spring/early-summer grounds, fishing the various humps, bumps and rockpiles around Noman’s, just off the Vineyard’s SW corner. Since Nantucket Sound went quiet a week or two ago, these grounds to the west’ard have been coughing up excellent catches of scup, most of them upwards of a pound, with the occasional three-plus Joe in the mix. Sea bass also added to the tally-no real corkers, but a slow, steady pick of keepers up to about the 2-pound mark, plus a handful of nice triggerfish and a fluke or bluefish here and there. [...] Read the rest of this post »

A lot’s happened in the last four days aboard the Helen H, one of the reasons we held off an extra day to update the fishing reports. Please note that we’re trying to stick to a rigid schedule, compiling reports on Mondays-leading out of the weekend and into the new week-and on Thursdays-leading into the weekend.

I caught Capt. Huck mid-afternoon on Friday. Heading into the last leg of the annual two-day limited load Nantucket Layover Fluke Trip, Capt. Huck was more than satisfied with the quality of the fishing along the east and south sides of Nantucket. Though his original plan had been to divide the time up between Nantucket and the Vineyard, a very steady pick of mostly keeper-sized slabs through the day on Thursday left Huck seeing little reason to continue the search in more distant waters. Big fish as of noon, day two, was a fat doormat scaling a little shy of the 9-pound mark. That fish was landed by NJ native, Jerry Hydrosko. Huck noted there were a good number of other fish in the 5- to 7-pound range in the coolers around the deck. [...] Read the rest of this post »

“We’re about at the tail end of porgy time,” said Capt. Joe Huck of the Helen H. After an explosive early start to the season, the skipper has seen water temps spike dramatically over the last week, with a reading of 67 degrees on Sunday’s run. That rapid warming has definitely taken a toll on the pick of scup. Huck noted that the quality is still definitely there, with most of the porgies coming in of respectable to impressive sizes, but the frequency has slowed to a crawl. He and the other skippers in the fleet are still managing to put a respectable catch together by working harder on the sea bass. They’ve been seeing a pretty good mix of sizes on the sea bass, from throwbacks to jumbos, on every trip. [...] Read the rest of this post »

Congratulations are in order for the Fish Hawk’s skipper, Capt. Joe Weinberg, who, as you read this is celebrating the arrival of his brand new baby daughter. The wee lady entered the world on Sunday afternoon, and Weinberg took a brief pause from his post Sunday afternoon. So it was that Capt. Joe Huck took the helm from a Thursday afternoon private porgy charter with a crew of six from New York.

Huck noted that the porgy fishing suffered a bit from the big astronomical tides since last week. [...] Read the rest of this post »

Capt. Joe Huck was watching a flurry of nice porgies swing aboard the Helen H when I caught up with him Monday evening. He was pleased to finally be enjoying some banner early summer weather: a light breeze out of the west, bright sun headed toward the horizon, and mill-pond-flat seas. After some scouting coming up on the big moon tides over the weekend, Capt. Walt Alger on the Angler found a nice body of “free-range” porgies on a stretch of open bottom a modest steam from Hyannis. Since big tides make “spot” fishing a bit trickier, Capt. Joe was relieved to discover a big pile of quality scup and sea bass in an area conducive to long drifts when the tide cranked. [...] Read the rest of this post »

I caught up with Capt. Joe Huck of the Helen H late Thursday evening, as he soaked up the last precious minutes of a forced day off from Porgy Madness. Thursday’s trips-both morning and afternoon-were scrubbed due to hard easterly winds in the forecast, and Joe’s reluctance to leave long-distance customers hanging with a last-minute cancellation. [...] Read the rest of this post »

Any of y’all who spend any regular time aboard know that the Helen H crew-including, of course, every captain of every one of the five boats in the growing fleet, the mates, the office, the galley folks-know that these folks stay in perpetual motion. Like any family-run and operated party and charter operation, the Helen H Fleet does 90-percent of its business in the late spring, summer and early fall. They make hay while the sun shines.
A side-effect of that is that no human being can attend to the daily grind of fishing, boat maintenance, answering phones, booking and scheduling, plus keeping at least one hand in the regulatory nightmare that fisheries have become plus marketing plus staying on top of a website plus sleeping at least a few hours a week. [...] Read the rest of this post »

Pro Tactics: Bigger Scup and Sea Bass
By Zach Harvey

No one reading this is apt to need a big sales pitch on why porgy fishing is such fun. Let’s face it: scup provide near-constant action, they pull-pound-for-pound-harder than almost anything else swimming in New England waters, and they’re delicious. And for whatever hard-wired biological reason, massive bodies of these little scrappers storm the shoal waters outside Hyannis each spring, to sow the next crop and then binge-feed. Interestingly, the Nantucket Sound spring run of porgies is unique in that the scup elsewhere-especially west of Buzzard’s Bay-are piled up thick along the beaches but just won’t chew. While draggers and fish trappers in Rhode Island have massive May and June landings, rod-and-reelers can’t usually buy a bite. Off Hyannis, porgies-the biggest kind of porgies, two- to four-pounders-chew like crazy. There are also sea bass in the mix, including some absolute monsters in excess of six pounds. [...] Read the rest of this post »

Capt. Joe Huck on the Helen H continued the daily porgy grind this week, and remains upbeat about the quality of the fishing, adding that the sea bass ratio improved from Wednesday afternoon on. He’s been a bit surprised to find the porgies are still in “herd” mode, cruising the open bottom in shoal water within spitting distance of the Helen’s Hyannis slip. [...] Read the rest of this post »