Lately as in July 2015
This summer has offered up some incredible fishing for my
neck of the woods. I’m going to try and
keep this short but there’s so much to tell.
The fishing in the upper bay has been red hot since early June. Of course I didn’t get on the bite till about
mid June and stuck with it for over a month.
Mid bay, bay bridge area. First I
found them suspended over deep water like down 20 feet over 50 feet on the
channel edge. Then I’d found them even shallower
on the ledge in 25 feet. Then I just
couldn’t go wrong. It was incredible on
a few evenings in July with a good outgoing tide. But I must say for some reason I always
seemed to hit it at the end of the outgoing and still struck pay dirt. The basic rig was to jig long skinny plastics
like 7 inch zoom super flukes on 3/4oz jig heads on light braided line like 14#
with a 25 pound tippet. With light line
like that the jig sinks about 2 feet per second or maybe more like 1.8 feet if
you wanted to get really technical. I’d
basically mark fish suspended near bait fish schools, cast out and give it a
long 4 count and start jigging. At 4
seconds my jig should be roughly 10 feet down but continues to sink as I
retrieve it. This way I didn’t go
through the fish or below the fish I was marking. I like an erratic retrieve with a sharp, fast
jigging action, picking up slack every time after the jig. Hits almost always happen on the fall and you
have to be ready with a swift hook set.
The fly rod also got some play with sinking line that’s supposed to sink
8 inches per second, 9wt full sinker.
For suspended fish, when there are a lot of fish I might add, the fly
rod is not a bad tool for the job. But
nothing can compare to the efficiency a jig will get down to those fish. If you want numbers, stick with the light
spinning or bait casting rod. But to
change things up, a fly rod will do wonders too. Two Friday’s ago I went out with my old
college roommate in his vintage 1980’s aluminum 16’ boat with an old 65 horse
merc on the back. The motor won’t run
well at low speeds but does quite well at ¾ throttle. Of course boat wake and
typical bay chop beat us up pretty well but wow did we find the fish holding on
well-known structure just north of the bay bridge. We had plenty of company and most people were
catching well. Hankey was blown away how
well the jigging rod worked. Forget the
chum he even said. I went out again on July 18th with
a 10-15mph South wind, combined with hundreds of other pleasure boaters and
every charter boat in the fleet. What
was I thinking? I crossed the bay in
that crap. But got on the fish again.
This time they were hugging the pilings pretty tight and the jig had to be
close to the bottom near the top of the pilings. Or the up current side of the pilings. There will be a current break down stream of
the piling but also just upstream of them, just like a boulder on a trout
stream. The hydraulics of the water
pushing around the structure, boulder, bridge piling creates a nice little
pocket just up current of said structure.
Well, they were there and sunset with a good incoming tide was the
ticket again. So, I’ve got a enough
striped bass in my freezer to give me mercury poison ten fold. I’ve eaten striped bass two or three times a
week in the last month. Probably because
I also just bought my first deep fryer.
Healthy? Probably not. Even though
I had all this fresh fish I still thawed out a packet of frozen fish dated July
2013?! Cut the freezer burn off, dipped it in egg white, flour and some Cajun seasoning
and it was a hit for all my neighbors the other day. Don’t tell them it was the 2 year old
fish. I had some and it was probably my
best batch yet. I’ve been pretty good
about releasing the larger fish and keeping the smaller fish… to some
degree. Of course on July 4th
we were staying at a friends on Kent Island and I needed a lot of meat for a
lot of people so elected to keep the biggest fish. This fish would rival anything April on the
Potomac could offer. What’s going
on? Some of these fish still had sperm
sacks, large sperm sacks inside of them.
All males and big ones at that.
But for some reason the rest of the bay is void of these fish. Why are they all above the bridge? What’s wrong with the water elsewhere? Why is every charter boat running miles upon
miles to the same area to put their clients on fish? Well because there are fish there. Or were.
This past weekend’s results were a fraction of what it was two weeks
ago.
July 10th 2015, Two bigguns to hand at once. Both fish were 35 inches. Is this April on the flats or July in the upper bay? I'm confused?
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| June 22, 2015 limit. Insane fishing. Probably at its peak, before the word got out too much. Many more 30 inch fish came to hand that night. |
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| Some nice fish on the fly rod too from June 22, 2015. |
Because of the hot striper bite I’ve done very little musky fishing. We were plagued with crazy amounts of rain in
June. The full moon in June fell around
June 2 and it was cloudy the entire time.
John C and I floated 8 miles in complete darkness on the hottest musky
moon of the year and were skunked?! It
was jet black out with no moon from the cloud cover. But of course we hooked up at the take out..
twice. Once when we dropped the car off
early in the evening and again at 3am when we got back to the car. Same fish?
Who knows but he got off both times.
But I did score a musky in mid June on a quick trip on my own just prior
to one of the strongest thunderstorms I’ve ever seen. The radar showed pink, purple, green blue,
red, all at once about to unleash hell on me and this fish hit Mr. Whiggley
just feet from the boat. Even with that
single treble hook in the head of the bait, the fish was hooked well. It blasted the bait in plain sight just as I
started the figure 8. Awesome take, and
a darn good fight for a “small” fish. I
was happy. But it was my only musky in
june. My third musky of the year out of
about 40 hours effort in total. I’ve had
a few complete skunks this winter and spring/summer. The river is pretty much off limits until it
cools down for me. But my Canada trip is
coming up with the full moon in August.
Hopefully I can kill a 9 year skunk on the mighty st. Lawrence. No that was not a typo, I’ve been skunked 9
years in a row. Yea, I’ve hooked and
seen fish every year but just can’t seal the deal. Get a guide young man, get a guide damn
it. But I just won’t. Save some money.. yea right.
June 20th musky on Mr. Whiggley
What else…. It’s hot, damn hot. The hottest day of the year with temps in the
high 90’s fell the last two days, July 20, 2015 and 19th. The humidity put the “feel” temps well above
100. Sweat pours down your back as soon
as you get out of the truck and it almost feels like a dog tick crawling down
your crack. So what do you do? You go trout fishing just outside the beltway
on a tailwater fishery no one knows about.
Water temps 5 miles downstream of the dam are still below 70
degrees?! I had 65 degrees at my one
favorite pool today in an area that hasn’t been stocked with trout in
decades. The cool water acts like an air
conditioner and it’s quite pleasant. The
water is at or near low summer flows and gin clear. At first I tried fishing an ant from far
downstream to try and not spook the pool. But you inevitably end up walking up on the pool
to fish the head of it, knowing full well that the best part of the pool is the
root wad in the tail end of the pool.
But no one wanted my dry there so I found myself right on top of the
fish. I caught a glimpse out of the
corner of my eye of a perfect red stripe just hovering motionless within a rods
length of my feet. One of the nicest
trout I’ve seen in this stream was sitting right next to me! I do a half hearted roll cast and plop the beetle
on its head. The fish just floats back
downstream as my size 16 terrestrial passes over its head. I tried that about a dozen times till I
pushed the fish almost out of the pool.
Darn!! So I take a far cast to
the head of the pool but the whole time I’m watching this fish behind me, not
paying any attention to my fly. I know
it’s now started to slowly sink but figured I’d still see a tiny dimple on the surface
when a fish took. Well, I didn’t. I go for another cast and I’m hooked up. This fish is no joke either. They are incredibly strong in this tiny
stream. The fish takes line, goes instinctively
for the undercut and I try to put the brakes on. That doesn’t work with 6x tippet. Did I ever say how much I hate 6x
tippet. There goes that fish. I felt pissed off for losing the fish but I
also felt kind of bad leaving a fly in its mouth. These are my pet fish. This is my go to spot, maybe 5 miles below
the dam. I could almost name each of
these fish. Well, maybe not because
today I saw probably 8 individual fish that us trout fishermen would consider
adults in the 10 to 12 inch size, not including the behemoth 15 incher that
eluded me. I later fished a small
brassie off a dropper behind a large beetle.
The black beetle vanished in the water, even if it was a size 14. It didn’t work well as a strike indicator but
I saw the trout move towards where I thought the nymph was drifting and just
pause. It made this move towards
something so I just set the hook thinking just maybe it took the fly. Yep.
Fish on! A few cartwheels later
the fish runs near the bottom and wraps the tippet on the only stick stuck in
the bottom and the beetle snags the f…ing stick. Yep, two fish broken off. Time for redemption now. Backed off to 5x, put on the old faithful
cone head woolly bugger and hooked up on the second cast and finally got one to
hand. Nice one hour lunch break I’d
say. Later I checked the water temps a
few miles further downstream and it only rose a couple degrees. Still in that comfortable range for trout
survival of 69 or 70 degrees. 80 is lethal,
70’s isn’t great but doable. It sure
would be nice to make that whole stretch a catch and release stream again. Or just keep it to myself. One of these days I’m going to get that 15
incher and I’d expect there are even larger fish in there somewhere. Forget the gunpowder or the north
branch. Why drive that far for similar
size fish when I have that in my back yard?
My own little St. Vrain in the middle of suburbia.
What else…. Oh.. the bass ponds are fishing well. Even in muddy water after one of the
strongest rainstorms we’ve seen in 5 years the fish cooperated for Ryan and me
a few weeks ago. Dark colored stick
worms did the trick.
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