Landed the first striper of the year last night right off our dock. If I hadn’t, I don’t know what I would have done because the fish were jumping all around me. I had no luck whatsoever with either the white or olive/white (last year they preferred chartreuse, fickle things that they are) clausers the good folks at the Kennebec Angler have had luck with, though I dutifully cast those for a good 45 minutes. Seeing the fish continue to rise, however, I decided to try something a little different – a surface fly. An oliv-ish baitfish type popper in this case. Five casts later, I hooked a very nice young striper about a foot long.
I was quite content and more than a little proud of myself until I spoke with a friend back in Colorado who landed a 16 inch rainbow trout this weekend up in Grand Lake, where I’ve never caught anything bigger than 8 or 10 inches.
And then I remembered David Churbuck’s brother’s fish, and I felt even worse. While I’m studiously trying to hold on to the moral high ground as I fish solely on fly rods rather than spin, the fact is that that fish is an order of magnitude larger than anything I’ve caught. It’s not even close.
But in any event, it’s good to be back.
David Churbuck says:
June 23, 2006 at 9:34 am
Nothing like a striper on a popper fly. Try a slider too — sloooowww retrieve — those can be an adrenaline blast at night on smooth water. I wish I had a photo of my 40 pounder I had stuffed and mounted. I caught that on a fly in the surf at Chatham a decade ago and it is still the fish of my life.
and no regrets over taking the moral high ground. I fly fish 90% of the time, but there are days when I love nothing more than breaking out the 11-foot surf rod with the Penn Squidder and heaving some heavy stuff a mile out into the deep blue briny.
Check out my other site sometime http://www.reel-time.com