Captain Slinger was kind enough to have me aboard for a little excursion on the Bay this past Sunday. The action was as hot as the sun. Foolishly I got so caught up in the catching that I failed to apply sun protection or drink even slightly reasonable amounts of water. Although I took a couple of days to recover, I'd do it again [prolly will:roll: ].
Conditions were beautiful for boating but I was skeptical that stripers could be found. As a longtime land bound striper hound, I depend on whitewater, riptides, and lots of exposed rock to point me toward the fish. It was hard to reconcile the mill pond conditions with the stripers I'm used to hunting.
We launched at sunrise from a very nice little park in [i think] Providence. Right away we were into schools of full sized adult pogies. Although no preditors seemed to be bothering them, I was very excited as I have not seen big pogies in years. I'd like to think some of those schools would make it up to Casco Bay for my vacation at the end of June. It has been many years since the big pogies have brought the great fishing of the early 90s to that region. Unfortunately I'm told there are still pogy boat at work in the Bay .
Anyway, Steve took me on a nice tour of many of his spots, many of which produced the occasional schoolie. Finally we spotted birds and breaks out in the middle of what to me looked like a structurless, currentless, well, mill pond. The stripers didn't seem to care however and we had a couple of hours of running up on schools, catching a few before they sounded, then spotting another school near by. We had a lot of fun, especially after Steve was kind enough to provide me with the correct fly as well as the special retrieve I needed to keep up with his mounting tally.:lildevl:
The fish were chasing silversides and were trapping them against the surface in water that was sometimes as much as 50 feet deep. It was interesting from my land based perspective to hook stripers at the surface and have them run straight down. I had to winch them to the surface like blackfish. There were every size from runts to keepers but the aggressive little ones seemed to get most of the flies. I managed to land one cocktail blue that didn't steal my [Steve's] fly.
It was a great day on the water!
Conditions were beautiful for boating but I was skeptical that stripers could be found. As a longtime land bound striper hound, I depend on whitewater, riptides, and lots of exposed rock to point me toward the fish. It was hard to reconcile the mill pond conditions with the stripers I'm used to hunting.
We launched at sunrise from a very nice little park in [i think] Providence. Right away we were into schools of full sized adult pogies. Although no preditors seemed to be bothering them, I was very excited as I have not seen big pogies in years. I'd like to think some of those schools would make it up to Casco Bay for my vacation at the end of June. It has been many years since the big pogies have brought the great fishing of the early 90s to that region. Unfortunately I'm told there are still pogy boat at work in the Bay .
Anyway, Steve took me on a nice tour of many of his spots, many of which produced the occasional schoolie. Finally we spotted birds and breaks out in the middle of what to me looked like a structurless, currentless, well, mill pond. The stripers didn't seem to care however and we had a couple of hours of running up on schools, catching a few before they sounded, then spotting another school near by. We had a lot of fun, especially after Steve was kind enough to provide me with the correct fly as well as the special retrieve I needed to keep up with his mounting tally.:lildevl:
The fish were chasing silversides and were trapping them against the surface in water that was sometimes as much as 50 feet deep. It was interesting from my land based perspective to hook stripers at the surface and have them run straight down. I had to winch them to the surface like blackfish. There were every size from runts to keepers but the aggressive little ones seemed to get most of the flies. I managed to land one cocktail blue that didn't steal my [Steve's] fly.
It was a great day on the water!