Fly Fishing Cape Cod Bay. Avery Revere

      35 . Cape Cod Bay (stripers)

       Location: Eastern Massachusetts, about a 1-hour ride from Boston; a 2-hour ride from Manchester, New Hampshire; a 2½-hour ride from Hartford, Connecticut; and a 4½-hour ride from New York City. Full-service airports are available in all four cities.

      Picture this: It is high noon on a hot, hazy, sunny day and you are standing in water just above your knees. You have your fly rod in hand and the fish are swimming right past you, some even bumping into your shins. Your cast is perfect, even if it is a little short, because once again—fish on!

      Or this. You are standing barefooted on the white fiberglass deck of a Florida-style flats boat, wearing your

      polarized sunglasses and floppy sun hat, with fly rod ready to cast. The sky is clear, the water is a shade considered tropical, and you can see all the details of the sandy bottom. You scan the water, and spot large, gray undulating pods of bait, and look a little harder to see that they are being pushed and herded by big fish.

      Are you on a vacation in Florida, the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, or Los Roques? The Seychelles, perhaps? No—this a summer day on a Cape Cod Bay sand flat.

      Cape Cod is famous for its saltwater fishing. Charter boats with crusty captains are a common sight at all Cape Cod harbors. Filled with tourists, the boats escort anglers to

      find striped bass, bluefish, and bluefin tuna. Sonar is the key, coupled with lead-core lines that are dragged all over the bay, producing happy fishermen with big fish for dinner.

      Fly fishing has traditionally been the domain of Chatham’s famous Monomoy Island, with its ubiquitous sand flats. However, the recent influx of seals—and now great white sharks—has rendered Monomoy more popular for seal tours than for fly fishing.

      My fly-fishing expertise is Cape Cod Bay, the body of water formed by the arm that is Cape Cod. Cape Cod Bay offers shallow-water and deepwater fishing from the Cape