Perched above a private peninsular beach, Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star Wequassett Resort and Golf Club is Cape Cod in a clamshell. It features the quiet interior shoreline of Pleasant Bay, and it provides easy access to the open ocean, where guests can pop over to the expanse of the Cape Cod National Seashore. Of course, the golf is amazing. The very “Capey” village of Chatham sits a mere 10-minute drive down Route 28.
And lately, the resort has bustled with excitement. It recently revamped its poolside experience by reimagining cabanas in coastal splendor with the help of Sister Parish Design and debuted brand new food services at LiBAYtion and Outer Bar— think poke bowls and calamari with sweet chili sauce on a lazy afternoon. Celebrating its 20th anniversary with food and festivals (Cape Cod Jazz & Arts Festival, July 9 to August 28), Wequassett is a beautiful spot to soak up summer.
Still, for those seeking more adrenaline-fueled activity, its closeness to the Atlantic offers one of the Cape’s most fabled assets: some of the best striped bass fishing in the world.
Ever since Teddy Roosevelt popularized the great outdoors in the early 1900s and shooting and fishing camps started springing up, the Cape has hooked generations of striper fishermen. Captain Nick Franco is a prime example. He started fishing here back in the 1980s, and now he’s made a career of doing what he loves. Among his many ventures, the captain runs excursions for guests of Wequassett in conjunction with Down Cape Charters & Boat Rentals, which operates off the resort’s pier.
In 2021, he and Down Cape’s owner, Kris Roszak, decided to add a sport fishing boat to the fleet, a Gamefisherman 32 named the Malabar. The Malabar can maneuver in just a foot of water, yet she’s seaworthy enough for a voyage to Nantucket, though Franco rarely takes guests that far. And there’s no need — the finest striper haunts lie off Monomoy Island, the eight-mile stretch of protected sand and dunes jutting south from Chatham Harbor.
I am a sometimes fisherman, but my father has consistently hunted stripers on Cape Cod since the 1950s. Still, in his seven decades on the water, he has only caught a few “keepers,” those large enough to bring home. I can’t recall ever snagging more than a couple myself, but I knew of Monomoy’s reputation. To fishermen, its rips are akin to what Utah’s powder is to skiers. Needless to say, I am particularly keen to discover what Franco can turn up.
“We’ll find the fish,” Franco says as we cast off from the dock. As we follow the channel out past Strong Island, the backside of Nauset Beach comes into full view. Aside from a couple of old houses, grandfathered in before President John F. Kennedy established this as the National Seashore, the view off the port side is untouched nature: scrub pine, rosa rugosa bushes, ospreys and common terns. The picturesque Chatham coastline and anchorage unfold starboard. The Malabar passes only two other boats. Seals pop up here and there, reminders that the area is “great white shark central.” Franco shows me a video of a 10- to 12-foot shark he spotted while cruising the shallows. “I’ve had one take a striper right off my line,” he says. Suddenly it feels reassuring to be riding in a 32-foot boat instead of a little Boston Whaler.
It’s an easy 15-minute ride to the island’s tip from the south cut. Malabar makes around 18 knots across the water, calm in the lee of the southwest wind. We start seeing more birds diving for bait fish and notice just a few other fishing boats. Franco points out the disturbed water ahead, a river of rippling waves flowing to the sea. “If you keep going due east, you’ll end up in Ireland,” he says.
Then, he explains how there are actually three positions, or rips, off Bearse Shoal: “We’re going to set up and troll over this first one, then cross that flat water and if we haven’t picked up a fish yet, we’ll go across the second.”
Rips form because dramatic changes in water depth speed up the currents, which funnel the bait fish. Stripers will wait at the edges, then give chase. “They’ll move up and down the rips all day,” Franco says.
As we cross the second row of waves and begin to turn back for another run, my rod tip bends over and he shouts, “Tight!” He slows the boat, holding it still against the current while I crank on the reel. It had been a long time since I had hooked a striper — and this one felt big. I bring it into the net and aboard. It’s a 28-inch beauty that has silver and black stripes shimmering in the sun like a sequin dress.
“That’s a keeper, going right into the ice,” the captain says. Regulations on stripers have changed over the years — for a long time, they had to be 36 inches or longer. Then it was reduced to 28. But for 2024, the keeper slot is between 28 and 31 inches. Anything longer or shorter goes back, and recreational anglers can bring home one fish per day.
Over the next few hours, the Malabar makes around a dozen passes through the rips, and we catch fish every time. No matter our approach — squid jigs on the heavy rods, a shad lure on a light spinning setup or surface plugs — we keep pulling them in. I hook more stripers this morning than I have in my life. My biggest catch is 33 inches long, but the rest are all in that keeper slot. In addition to my first winner, Franco keeps another one to bring home to his father. “This was a good day,” he says. “I get maybe 10 days like this a season.”
But it’s dinner that delivers Wequassett’s chef-d’oeuvre. When we hit the dock and meet with Roszak and the Down Cape crew, Franco fillets my striper to send to the kitchen. Roszak explains how the chefs will swap it into the prix fixe menu.
Like any fish, striper is best served fresh, and the resort’s seafood-driven Five-Star restaurant, Twenty-Eight Atlantic, knows how to do it right. Executive chef James Hackney and his team prepare our main courses of grilled striped bass and flash-seared pieces for crudo and a maki roll with cucumber, avocado and salmon eggs. We eat for nearly as long as the fishing outing. The evening brings the experience full circle — the quintessential Cape Cod day at Wequassett with views that seem to stretch all the way out to the rips of Monomoy.
