A Day to Remember

Some fishing days slip through memory without much effect. They aren't special days, nothing out of the ordinary happens, nothing remarkable gets caught, no interesting people are met while out on the water, and they melt into the background of typical days, never leaving a mark in the anglers mind. Thursday was not such a day. It was something special. And though I've had many far better days of catching striped bass, only a handful rival Thursday, November 1st 2018 in the aspect of spectacle.

Mark Alpert and I knew pretty quickly upon exiting the breachway from our chosen launching place that we were going to at least catch fish. There were at least three flocks of birds over breaking fish within close proximity. We got right on the first ones and were into fish right away. the average for the rest of the day was set right then: easy fishing, huge schools of absurdly fat school bass, and bigger fish that were far to easily missed and lost.

Now, one of the differences between this day and some other spectacular striper days I've had is that, although there were huge, gigantic, massive, colossal schools of bass out there feeding, they never condensed into big sprawling blitzed where we were. It was kind of like the day of the hundred acre albie blitz last fall (flyfishingcts.blogspot.com): There were just huge spreads of fish feeding in a broad area, with smaller groups of fish busting and a more of less even distribution of fish not actually breaking in between those smaller groups. There were thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of striped bass under us on this day.

At slack tide the action stopped for us there so we moved west, relaunching in CT. I had talked to Phil Sheffield and he had been on fish. We didn't even get to the intended spot before doubling up.

What we saw along the beach was not particularly spectacular. Fish were there, but they were scattered. Mark suggested we go around Watch Hill, for sometimes this time of year you can go around that point and see that chaos is unfolding on the opposite side, hidden from view to the west by the point. That's exactly what was happening, and for the rest of the evening we were on some of the biggest schools of striped bass I've ever seen. There were big fish in the mix too, we'd see them swirl on the bait periodically or follow a my fly back all the way to the boat. When I was fishing a popper, which was one of the more productive flies, it was not unusual for there to be 4, 5, 6, probably up to 8 bass underneath it if it made it boat-side without a hook up. If I just let it sit at the end of the retrieve, often one would come up and take it like a bluegill sipping a dry fly. One of the fish that did that was a definite 30 incher. No, I did not boat that one.

Really, there's only one thing I would change about this day if I could.
I wish it had been flat calm! In the swell we had, it was impossible to get photos that did it any justice. It was a show like I've never seen before.