Chasing Blitzes in Kayaks

Noah and I went a huntin' on Friday, targeting whatever we could find in the area around Millstone first thing in the morning. The real was hope was that we would encounter some of the small mahi mahi that have been showing now and then in the discharge recently. I did encounter one, but it was brief and not attached to my fly. It was a clear view of a loner leaping clean out of the water in a pod of albies. Not what I really wanted, I wanted to hook one, but it was still pretty cool.

The mos prominent fish in the discharge were, no surprise, bluefish. The first I hooked up bit me off. The second decided to be a striper.

I was hooking blues in the big blitzes pretty much any time I put a deceiver in the foam, but I was also getting bit off a lot. Noah was hooking fish and not getting bit off, but his fish seemed to like dropping the hook.We both did catch some though, and I don't mind not bringing bluefish into the kayak too often.

After a while of working the blitzes the discharge was slowed down and the bite stopped, so we decided to pick up and move. We covered some l=ground hunting and pecking, looking for albies working or any other signs of life. The false albacore were not concentrated into pods and there weren't enough around to blind cast for them. After a while though I saw some nervous water. Then there were predators assaulting the bait fish. At first they were small bluefish. Then, after a few minutes, we started to see tail slapping and thrashing through the school. The bass had found them. What proceeded was one of the most manic half hours of kayak fishing I've had. There were a lot of bass in that spot and some big ones, and they were feeding hard. You would think this would lead to tons and tons of hookups but it did not.

We were really really far from skunked, but I was pretty surprised by how few fish we did pull out of that area as they were plainly all over. I don't think fly or lure selection was a big issue as I tried exact imitations of the anchovies they were eating and it was a pink and chartreuse deceiver that actually fooled fish. I got so many follows from good sized bass, but they would not commit. Who knows, maybe I should have thrown a popper. 

When that bite ended we struggled to find fish again. We ended up leaving fairly early in the day, which was fine by me. Chasing blitzes in kayaks is exhausting.