Get to Know the Cape Cod Canal: An Excerpt from Seven Miles After Sundown – On The Water

“A guy took his somewhat naïve girlfriend fishing one day for her very first time on the Cape Cod Canal. She was patiently tending her fishing pole with a sinker holding the bait on the bottom as her boyfriend fished about 20 yards away. She tried to reel in her line, but called out to her boyfriend that she was stuck on the bottom. He quickly came over to try to help her get it free. He took her rod, pulled a couple of times and looked at her with fear in his eyes as he declared, “Oh no, you hooked the plug.” “The plug,” she exclaimed, “What the heck is that?” He acted very concerned as he went on to tell her, with a straight face, that there is a plug in the middle of the Canal and when it is pulled out all o f the water goes down the drain and leaves the Big Ditch high and dry! The boyfriend continued by telling her that there is a $500.00 fine for pulling the plug so that they had better get out of there right away before the police come and arrest them. As they were leaving the poor girl could be overheard saying, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t even know that there was a plug out there!”

I’m told that they both shared a good laugh later, but the bottom of the Canal is littered with thousands of lead sinkers that were lost in one manner or another by bait fishermen who were using the weight to deliver their payload. A bottom rig getting stuck between some rocks on the floor of the “Big Ditch,” as the Canal is called, is the most common reason for losing sinkers. Fishermen do the best that they can to try to get it free, but when all else fails it is time to break the line and start over again. Thus, it is no surprise that the Cape Cod Canal has been referred to as, “the world’s largest lead depository!”

The Cape Cod Canal, separating mainland Massachusetts from Cape Cod, is maintained by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Skippers of ships using the Canal are able to significantly reduce their travel distance and avoid the sometimes more dangerous route around the tip of Provincetown. Opening in 1914, the Cape Cod Canal has been providing recreational opportunities and facilitating safe passage for boats for over one hundred years.

Canal fishermen are quite often referred to as “Canal Rats.” The Canal is a surfcasting paradise as it is one of the few places in the world where a fisherman can stand so close to deep water with both feet on solid ground instead of in a boat. The Canal is over 17 miles long, but more than half of that is only accessible by boat as it extends into Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards Bay. Most of the area that is fished by surfcasters is bordered on each side by a service road that is also used daily by workers, runners, walkers, bicyclists, and others. The service road on the mainland side is 7 miles long with the slightly shorter Cape side distance measuring 6 1⁄2 miles. The roads on both sides are marked off every 1⁄2 mile on the edge of the pavement and are elevated which gives fishermen a good view to spot breaking fish on the surface of the water as they ride their bikes in search of the best opportunity. The route from the service road to the water in most places is a slippery and dangerous rip rap stone slope comprised of all different sizes of rocks including huge boulders. The first time that I took Paul Maher surfcasting on the Canal he was surprised by the steep jagged stone pile that we were about to descend. Paul looked around at the perilous rocks and said, “I didn’t realize that this involved two different sports – fishing and rock climbing!”

The service roads are lined with telephone poles along both sides of the Canal. Usually every fourth pole supports a street light and bears a numbered sign beginning on the east end with number 10 and continuing in increments of 5 by going all the way up to 375 on the west end. These numbered poles are used by fishermen and others to distinguish one location from another for the purpose of a meeting place or to describe or record where a fish was caught. West end surfcasters can fish past pole 375 on the mainland side at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and on the Cape side off of Bell Road where there are a few more numbered poles.

The service roads are located in the towns of Bourne and Sandwich with portions of each town situated on both sides of the Canal. There are three bridges that span the Canal and connect the Cape to the mainland. The Bourne and Sagamore Bridges provide a route for cars and trucks with two travel lanes in each direction. It takes 2 1⁄2 minutes to lower the vertical lift Railroad Bridge when a train needs to cross which results in all boat traffic being halted temporarily. People stop to watch the bridge go up and down as it is quite an incredible feat of American engineering.