The 5 best Nantucket Beach Fishing Spots in June are…

1. Eel Point
2. Coatue (inside)
3. Coatue (outside)
4. Cisco
5. Hoiks Hollow

I can not believe I just create a list of the best Nantucket Beach Fishing spots and didn’t include Great Point. There are a number of great Nantucket Striped Bass fishermen who are going to crawl out of their grave and come find me. The truth though, is that Great Point doesn’t really light up in June much anymore, or at least not for the last 3-5 years. Yes, the outside of Great Point can be excellent, but if the outside of Great Point is excellent, than Hoiks Hollow will be out of control.

To best understand the above list of Nantucket Beach Fishing Spots, one first needs to understand the pattern of bait around Nantucket. In June, the sand eels have yet to arrive, the island has the first run of squid, crab are plentiful and a variety of small herring and other hatchling baitfish have pushed into our waters just ahead of the stripers. In june, the blues are just showing up, but they are mostly on the south side. The Striped Bass too are mostly on the South side and than swing around through madaket to the warm refuge of the flats/eel point/ and the harbors.

The Striped Bass start their migration north in the early Spring coming from the chesapeake, and Hudson mostly. It is rumored that they follow a certain temperature water, but that isn’t exactly true, they are more following the creation of bait that gets moving chasing the algea growth of the warm water. The big fish simply follow the food. But Fish that are migrating in the Spring are more focused on feeding and exploring than simply moving, so when Striped Bass hit Nantucket they tend to stay for a few weeks as the water is warm, relative to the open ocean, and the food is plentiful, again due to the warmth of the water relatively and the outflow of freshwater produced from the island. So the first Striped Bass tend to arrive in May on the South Side and they quickly find the warm waters mentioned above. Eel point is such a great fishery because it is the highway of fish coming to the northside of the island from the South Shore. Any fish trying to get to Nantucket Harbor, needs to go via Eel Point.

After the fish get to the warmer, easier to navigate, and food abundant North Shore, they tend to either go into the harbor to forage or to the beaches of coatue to warm themselves. This is why I mention both. If you are fishing Nantucket in June fish either side of high tide around 2nd point and head to the beach for the low part of the tide. On the outside you will have the opportunity to sight fish.

The last two on the list are Cisco and Hoiks Hollow. Cisco is where most of these fish show first and so while fish that have been around for awhile tend to head North, those that are just showing up tend to hit the South Shore. As the month moves on and the smaller fish move North, the large fish tend to stay on the South Shore as the bait piles up and it becomes easy feeding. On a good June, the East side of the island gets a separate push of fish that somehow missed the island, hit the eastern sandbars and push in to find food. Luckily for us, when they push in, they find the east side of the island…most notably Hoiks Hollow. Go fish any of the above locations and you stand a good chance of having a day/night to remember.

A few other great locations