March Madness

It’s been almost over a year since I took Richard fly fishing.   The last time I took him out,  he had just learned to cast a shooting head and caught his first stripers on a cast fly.   He’s been practicing his casting for a year and yesterday I felt that maybe the forebay was getting good enough for him to catch some fish.   The forebay has a lot of fish in it right now.  The trollers and bait fishermen are catching fish with regularity and there are large schools of pretty big fish swimming around in the cuts and flats.  When you can find them,  the action is pretty steady.   In addition,  there are more schools of larger fish (20-24 inches)  around than in years pasts in my opinion from talking to other fishermen and scoping out the garbage bins at the fish cleaning station.  The water temps was 58 degrees and I think the fish are getting ready to spawn.  For the first time ever,  the Dam Police kicked me off the Mederious wall!  It was not producing anyways.

Eagle-40We started out fishing the spots that produced last week.but when we got there, there were a few boats fishing the area hard at around 7:30am.   One group of fly fishermen was a Dentist with his buddy and they seemed to be hooking fish in the cherry spots but nowhere near last weeks frenzy.  They came up to say hello at the end of the day and it turns out they are friends with Wayne–small world.  When our turn came up to drift over the holes,  Richard immediately hookedup with the fish of the day,  a fat 22 inch striper while dangling the fly right under the boat.   He also managed a couple more during the day.    I love fishing with Richard because he gets speechless when he catches fish.  He loves it and can go all day for a senior citizen.  We ended up with only a handful of fish around the island  in 15 feet of water but we later found them in the flats in 8 feet of water.  For awhile we were catching a fish every 5 minutes.  We ended the day with a total of 20 fish with 5 fish over 18 and the rest averaging 17.   Richard caught all his fish  right under the boat !  The weather was clear and cold in the morning,  but it got hot enough to layer down in the afternoon.  The winds were light,  and clouds were spectacular.   I think fog makes the fishing better, but there was none.  the action was best around 10 am and shut off completely from 11-2pm.  The solonar tables showed a peak at 9:15am. Casting the new one piece Helios2 was a joy.

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3 thoughts on “March Madness

  1. For most of the day we fished the 10-15ft range. However in the time we were in the shallows (our kick to and from the truck), we did manage to hook up. In fact my brother’s biggest came from about 6ft of water and it was his first fish of the day! I planned to fish topwater, however I didn’t think it was ideal conditions. Our observation was that the fish went to the bottom in deeper water when the weather turned nasty. I didn’t see Vaughn, of course I associate him with his boat. I did see a gentleman and a partner in a crestliner similar to yours though that kinda looked like him. Guess it was! Next time out, I want to try topwater in the flats! Or maybe I’ll try the big lake and try to locate something big there! It’s tough making that decision every time we head out.

  2. Hey Meng,
    Great report. I did the same thing Saturday in regards to taking a friend out who is just learning to fly fish, let alone cast t-14. He managed to boat 12 with his biggest being 20 inches. My brother boated 25 with the biggest being 24 inches and I boated 35 with with a handful over 20 inches and the biggest about 23 inches. Go figure, 72 fish again. With all those fish also came tons of weather. There were plenty of white caps with avg wind of 12mph and gusts in the 20’s. Then came the rain, then the thunder and then the hail! We were 3 guys in tubes having the time of our lives!

    • Vaughn said you guys did well when he hightailed it out of there on Saturday around noon. He said the bite turned on when the weather got fierce. I use to fish SL only in a float tube for years and I remember some great days on the lake in rain and wind with White Caps busting over the back of the tube. I noticed that the fish moved into the shallows yesterday. Did you catch any fish in less than 5 feet of water or did you fish the deeper 10-15 feet? Just curious?

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