SANTUIT POND

 

Bob Medeiros shows off a nice large mouth from Santuit Pond. Bob is the director of the NE district in the ABA (American Bass Anglers Association). He is also a member of the Rod Jockeys of the Mass Bass Federation Nation. Bob has devoted most of his time running his district, but manages to get out and fish around the Cape.

BOB'S TECHNIQUES

Text Box: Santuit Pond is a 210 acre lake located in Mashpee, MA. It is surrounded by unused cranberry bogs & is fed by the Santuit River. Fishing pressure doesn't hurt this impoundment as one may think because the forage food, alewives, perch & sunfish along with crawfish help the big bass grow at rates found in larger lakes & ponds. Spring fishing can be great just after the winter & I have found many of the larger fish to be in the bushes & other protective cover and skipping jigs & pork along with Senkos & tube baits normally targets these fish. As pre-spawn approaches, the larger fish are usually found in areas where there is a drop located near shallower water & this a feed staging point. Bedding fish are an easy target during this period but I go there to locate the spawning fish & although the temptation to fish for spawning bass is there, I make it a point to stay away from the bedding bass as much as I can. As summer approaches & the tournament activity increases, the bass descend into the deeper water (8-10 feet) & slowly working a jig & pork or a tube bait usually triggers the strike. The submergent weed growth are areas where a small shallow running crankbait along w/rattletraps work well along with a white/chartreuse or white, slow rolled spinnerbait can be extremely effective. There are many docks located on this pond & this protective cover are targets, that over the years, has produced some monster bass. I fish this area w/a  7-8" floating worm Texas rigged w/a 4/0 Gamakatsu offset worm hook which gives the bait the nice slow fall rate that has triggered many 4-5lb. largemouth bass. On the south end of the front pond & the southeast side of the back pond are stump that at times can hold some huge fish but the quiet & slow approach is the key to fishing these areas. Jigs w/pork can target these fish but a top water bait can be equally as good. Fishing Santuit Pond at dusk to dark with buzzbaits can produce a lot of action.  I have also found fishing at night that a 1/2 oz.Strike King Midnight Special black spinnerbait works extremely well fished slowly from the shallows to deep water & vice versa. Over the years I have caught 16 bass that weighed 7 lbs. & 5 fish 8+ lbs. All fish were tagged & released & I have not caught a duplicate fish. On Labor Day weekend in 2000, I caught my largest bass in Mass. here that weighed in at 9 lbs. 11 ozs. and she was caught on an 8" Quick Strike methiolate floating worm. I use a 12" leader connected to the main line with a #10 black barrel swivel. This technique not only eliminates line twist but gives the worm a slow fall rate after twitching the bait. Being a shallow pond quietness, in the boat, is an absolute must & if you practice some of these techniques, hold on to your rod because one of them could have a monster on the other end of your line. Tight line & Fair winds.

 

MY TECHNIQUES

I have included my writings of years past in this section.  I think it has merit and shows how the pond has changed over the last 8 years. I often go back to my "notes" and see if a particular lure, area or technique is worth trying again.  The pond still is susceptible to spring cold fronts and yet is the first to warm up in the spring as well, because of the shallow depth. The grass in the pond has changed in abundance, location and type over this period.  This has certainly affected the position of the bait fish and bass.   I hope this will give you some incite in catching bass in Santuit.

This picture was taken in the spring of 2002. The fish weighed over 6lbs.  I ended up with 4 fish that day all about that size. Those days you file away in your memories because you don't have many of them.  The fish were beginning to move toward the shoreline to prepare for spawning.  The weather was different this spring: we had a week that was incredibly warm and it moved the fish shallow in early April.  Then we had some spring cold fronts that moved through the region and the fish hunkered down in the grass instead of moving around.  Santuit is not a deep pond, there are a few "holes", marked on the map, that are around 10 feet. Most of the pond is about 5-6 feet with "moss or grass" growing down to the 7-8 foot depths. In the spring , as in most Cape ponds, the fish move toward the shallows and begin to feed.  You must watch the weather reports for the night temperatures:  Santuit cools very quickly because it is shallow.  During this spring the water temperature dropped almost 7-10 degrees in the month of April. The day I caught these fish, the water was warming and we had 3-4 days of nice weather before the day I went fishing.  I used my temperature gauge and used a senko, texas rigged very slowly. I was working the shallow edge of the grass, about 3-4 feet. The water in Santuit also becomes colored with algae or in the Spring it gets silted with windy conditions and the grass isn't developed enough to filter it.  My friend, Rich Dougherty, and I only caught a few fish, but they were all big. After the spawn, the fish tend to move off the shoreline.  One year when the water was very high, I caught good fish under the overhanging tree branches, but not recently.  As Bob mentioned, the docks hold some good fish. I fish off the shoreline during the summer.  A spinnerbait, ratt-l-trap, sluggo- all work well. The key is not get caught in the grass and to move the bait only as fast as the bass want it.  Sounds simple, but I believe it's knowing or finding the movement of the lure that is key. Even though the pond is small, it does have a lot of different structure; shallow trees, grass, springs, deep shoreline, stumps, herring run, points and gravel bars. Santuit has a lot of pickeral in it. Many days I have caught nothing but pickeral, at least it seems that way. I also find that if the pickeral are biting, it's a good day, because you should be able to catch some bass.  If the pickeral don't bite, work real slow and in the grass for the bass!!! The fall is a nice time to fish, pick your days.  As I said, because it is shallow it cools very quickly, so I find that in the fall, afternoons are better than the mornings. Crankbaits worked very slowly can be  great.  I find that the fish just stop the bait. There is no hard charge or pulling, the bait just stops as if you got stuck on a log. Someone put "a or some" small mouth in the pond! This spring I was fishing along the gravel bar and caught a small mouth- here is the picture

                                                                 

The white object next to my left leg on the seat is a clip board with paper.  I take it with me, make notes and draw structure where I catch good fish. I also put it on my GPS, but I  put the notes on the paper so that I can transfer the information later. I don't leave anything to memory any more- you "younger" anglers should take notes, too.  I find that many areas "look the same"- and I'm asking myself was it 5 ft or 4 ft that the log was in???  And which way was it's orientation??

2004-  Well  I only got to fish Sanutit Pond a couple of times this year. I took out a few of the Bourne Braves ball players and we caught some fish, but not the big ones. The water turned a very brown color, something I have not seen, maybe other anglers can remember some years in the past, when it turned this color.  It was more than an algae bloom, it was very silty, all over the pond. We had strong winds in June and July when I fished, and it seemed to mix the entire pond, I couldn't see a white spinnerbait more than 4-6 inches below the surface.  I did a lot of pitching and casting to the shore line for the tournament I fished.  I caught a 5lber about a foot from the shore on a spinnerbait.  I had good luck in practice, pitching a large lake fork beavertail 4 inch grub, with chartreuse, green pumpkin, red colors in it ;a gift from a friend, I have no idea what the color is in order to get some more. I was catching 3- 4 pounders.  Nothing during the tournament except smaller fish.  Finally I found some small branches near the shore and I saw the baitfish near them.  I started throwing the sluggo and caught my limit and finished 2nd. The winner was throwing spinnerbaits along the grass line near the shoreline.  The picture shows Joe Duarte with 4 of his 5 largemouth (Joe is in red).  My 5 lber is shown below.

 

2006-  Santuit provided some great fishing this year. I fished mainly in the fall because of the new regulations concerning the ramp-  need town sticker between Memorial Day and Labor Day.  The pond has lost (or someone killed)  a lot of the grass in the pond.  The fish were in the trees along the bank, (late summer)  early fall- September.  There was also a grass line about 10 feet from the bank, most of the way around the pond. Depending on the wind and water clarity, you could see the weed line.  The fish seemed to move from the trees into the grass.  Small jigs and worms, creature baits were getting them in the grass, while minnow like baits worked better under the trees.  Late in the fall-October,November-  spinnerbaits were working over the grass.  Short little pitches in front of the boat towards the trees and then reeling back to the boat.  1/2 oz big blade spinnerbaits worked the best.  Aound November, I was using small crankbaits just above what grass was left around the 4 foot areas.  On sunny days , pitching a jig under the trees caught some good ones,too.

2010-  I'm going to look back to 2008 to start with.  The winter was mild and Ted, Vern, Pete DeMoya(featured in Ashumet) and I fished in January, February and March.  Some days we had to get through a little ice, but usually the pond was ice free. Even in January we were using a ratl-trap to catch our fish, and lots of fish.  The water temp. was around 39 -41.  The fish just kept eating the trap.  They seemed to be schooled up in the northern end and each day we had to go find them.  The depth varies only slightly between 3 ft and  5 feet.  There was a lot of layered grass from the previous season on the bottom, and the fish were up there through those early months.  In 2009, the fish didn't bite like they did in 2008.  The ratl-trap caught some fish, but mostly it was with a jerk bait. The fish weren't in the real shallow part, they were in the 5- 6 ft. depth.  Ted and I found a lot of fish in the "middle" of the pond, depth of about 8 ft.  As the water warmed, the concentration of bass moved closer to the shoreline.  I had a "group"  I was following from 8 to 5 ft, and the incline was steep.  Ted was onto some fish that were on a tapered point and some in a 9 foot "hole."  The ratl-trap bite that we experienced the year before never really materialized (for us).  The Rod Jockeys had a tournament in March of 2009 and I won it, with around 15 lbs. I caught most fish with a tube or hair jig in 5-8 ft.  As the spring progressed, the fish move to the banks.  The water is still brown and there are many signs telling people of the algae blooms and don't eat the fish!!  The grass is not everywhere any more.  There are shoreline areas that have some broadleaf, light green grass areas.  I find these are magnets for the bass after the spawning season.  Spinnerbaits, crankbaits,traps, or jerkbaits will catch them.  Fish to your strength or have fun and try different lures and techniques to catch the fish.  I have been trying to learn to pitch and using a 3/8 oz jig, I'm getting better. It's the reward of catching a bass, that makes you gain confidence with the technique and lure, and Santuit provides plenty of structure for you to practice.  During the summer, the brown grass had grown to the surface and was in mats. The areas held the bass.  The lily pads were thick as well.  I tried the frog in these areas and had some success. It's really fun to see the fish blow up on the frog.  I also pitched a jig or a texas rigged creature bait in the "holes".  This is slow, but I had a lot of strikes to get to learn the techniques. Sometimes, you get the "thump"  for a bite. Most times it just "feels" different, or the line moves, or instead of a head  shake, there is a "tail wag".  That's what I call it, when the line isn't moving away, but the fish seems to be moving it's tail.  It took me quite awhile to understand that I was getting a bite.  In the fall, I remembered where these thick weed beds were and as the rest of the pond was losing weeds, these areas were still holding fish.  I'm not telling specific areas, because each year they move!!  It may be 50- 60 yards, but it was different than in 2008, so do some expoloring.  I like to use a shallow running crankbait on 12 lb test big game and throw at the laydowns and the grass along the banks.  In 2009, the depth of the pond was going down because they didn't block the herring run.  The grass was near the bank because the water level was low. In November, the boards were put in, and the level started to rise.  There was more depth around the grass and more bass in the grass. The last part of November, I fish the stumps and the clumps of  grass that have died and pile up on the bottom.  The shoreline fishing gets slow at this time-  the trees and bushes hold less fish. 

3/21/10-  The Rod Jockeys had our first tournament here for the season.  In pre-fishing the pond, I noticed the water temp slowly creeping up.  Neither Ted nor I could find the schools of fish that we had in the previous years.  The water was much higher and clearer!!   The fish I caught were small and under 3 feet near the banks. That's where I planned to stay for the tournament-  it also was the warmest days (50's)  for the previous 4 days.  The water temp went up to 53-  I used a ratltrap and jerk bait just to make sure the fish weren't going to start chasing bait.  In fact I tried this technique through out the tournament-  with no success.  I stayed to the banks and trees in the sunny areas.  I had my 5 fish in the first hour- 2 rats and 3 good ones. All on 1/4 oz jig-green pumpkin.  I stayed to the bank and culled out the little ones.  Ted found his fish on the drops, like last year, with a jig. Just like last year they were clones of one another-  he was 2nd with 8 lbs. 

Post spawn:  I fished a lot during the summer so I could keep practicing using jigs and flipping!!!   The fish were in the shoreline structure and using a jig or senko was the way to catch them.  The fish were still relating to the sparse grass that rimmed the shoreline.  When you found the thicker areas, the more fish there was.  The RJ's held their last tournament of the year here in Oct.  The fish were not in the usual spots.  I finally realized that we had a hard rain storm a couple of days before the tournament, and the pond was still very turbid.  There wasn't as much grass in the pond to filter it.  The fish were right up near the bank.  Vern tipped me off to it when he started getting bites when he threw his senko almost to the bank.  The problem was, he didn't have heavy enough line to pull them out.  I put on a light jig (1/4 oz) and began getting it up near the bank-  sunny areas-  and started catching fish.  They weren't the big ones, but I ended up in 2nd place.  I did feel good about figuring out the fish.  I didn't get the bite with the crankbait through the grass as I did in 2009.  I think because they didn't let the water rise as they did in 2009.  The pond level was much lower in 2010. 

The pond iced up in November!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  NUTS

HOT SPOTS

I have picked some areas on the map of  Santuit Pond to talk about. Pan the mouse around the lake and when it changes to a hand; click on the area and I will tell you some of the bottom structure and features in the area. These are my general findings, please do not use this map for navigation purposes.

 

 

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