Tailin' Blues, Poppin' Bass, and a New Species

The sun was not yet up on Tuesday when Rick and I left the boat launch and headed out to look for predator fish in the near shore waters around Fisher's Island and the Rhode Island shoreline. The moon was full and false dawn was well underway. We had just the right amount of light to navigate out and get to our desired area in time. Bonito were the main target. Though I know now they were numerous not far from where we fished, we never found them. What we did find after a little searching was a bit of a surprise. After months of nothing but the odd small schools of snapper or cocktail blues, we found ourselves looking at hundreds of tailing bluefish. The tide was slack and the surface was glassy and smooth, and the entire length of the ledge we were over was covered with the swirls and tails of slowly finning bluefish, undoubtedly soaking in the morning sun to help themselves digest whatever massive feast they enjoyed during the late night moon tide. These fish were exceedingly skittish. In fact we only got one take from a bluefish out of the tailing fish, and it was on my big white Hollow Fleye. The fish went airborne for the fly, launching out of the water like a torpedo. The hook didn't find flesh though and all I got was the show of that monster blue taking the fly. Stripers though, came up through the schools to smash a Bobs's Banger and the albie snax Rick fished. They weren't big bass, but they were what I call 'upsize schoolies", bass in the 22-28 inch range

When the tide started to move and the rip formed, a few things happened. The tailing blues went down. We started to catch the odd blue. And the popper wasn't working as well anymore. I switched to a Game Changer, Which has proven to be wildly effective on stripers for me in a few different conditions. On this occasion it's subsurface walk the dog action was key. It kicked butt.

When the bite slowed there we went hunting. We covered a fair bit of ground, but didn't find our bonito. On our way between areas I mentioned that it is possible to catch odd species holding on the cans this time of year. We stopped by a red bell buoy. Sure enough, a bunch of small fish chased my fly off the can on the first cast. It took us a little to find a good position, but we did eventually and the spot-lock function on Rick's Minn Kota did its job and did it well. Some we were into some odd little late summer residents: banded rudderfish. We found that just about every can had some. They were odd little fish, with tiny scales and the smoothest slime I'd ever felt. They seemed to prefer sitting ahead of the cans rather than the slicks behind them, and in the ripping flood tide they were tough to pull up even with my 10wt. 

We hopped around a few cans, and all but one had rudderfish. Seeing as there were no other oddball species on the cans, we searched around for a bit before settling on a couple drifts in a spot the produced one fluke and some sea robins for Rick and one robin for myself. Variety is the spice of life! We caught a bunch of fish and some very interesting ones. It was a great day to be on the water. 

If you enjoy what I'm doing here, please share and comment. It is increasingly difficult to maintain this blog under dwindling readership. What best keeps me going so is knowing that I am engaging people and getting them interested in different aspects of fly fishing, the natural world, and art. Follow, like on Facebook, share wherever, comment wherever. Every little bit is appreciated! 

Thanks for joining the adventure, and tight lines.