A Surprise Visit by The Big Bass

This year in CT has provided precious few opportunities to get into good sized striped bass with the fly rod. With the biomass of big female bass at the lowest it has been since even I started to fish for this species not all that many years ago, big fish are concentrated in isolated pockets, and Long Island Sound has not been a hot spot this season. But with the water cooling gradually and big stripers leaving their northern summer haunts, as well as coming inshore to feed on the bait leaving the estuaries, the odds improve a little. A few days ago Mark Alpert and I set out looking for anything that would eat our flies. We found schoolies and bonito fairly quickly, and hung out waiting for shots. Other boats came and went without hooking up, but our patience payed off when the bonito popped up within range. I missed mine but Mark hooked up. This little bonito ate a pretty big fly, one about 4 inches in length... just some food for thought.

After a while our bonito stopped showing as much and we'd pretty much put the bass down over repeated drifts, so we decided to move. The sun was high, the tide was slack, and there were no birds and breaking fish around. But we aren't one trick ponies and we don't just run and gun blitzing fish... the fish everybody can catch. We slid up into an area I knew was likely to hold some bass and I sent a hookless topwater plug as far as I could. Four feet into the retrieve there was a massive explosion. Then another, and another, and another. Three or four giant stripers mouthed, tail slapped, and t-boned the plug repeatedly, growing more and more frustrated in there inability to kill it. As they got closer I could see them clearly in the water and said "Holy shit Mark, these are giant bass". Things got frantic then. I got the plug out of the water and we both made casts with the fly rods, which resulted in takes from smaller and bigger fish but no hookups. Speaking for myself, I was far too excited to get things right and needed to take a moment to calm down. We drifted out of the area, regrouped, re-set another drift, and I picked up the plug rod again. I made  few casts on one side of the boat without pulling up a fish. I turned and made a cast in the other direction and a 40lb fish blew up on the plug almost as soon as it hit the water. I kept it coming, drawing the fish into casting range. Mark made the cast and I yanked the plug out of the water. I immediately saw all five or six of the fish that were following it, each 40 inches or larger, frantically start looking for something to kill. All that was left was Mark's fly, and one fish accelerated and inhaled it. I didn't know it yet, but it was actually the smallest of that group, though still a very big fish by both of our standards. The fight was typical and perfect. Nothing went wrong. I lipped the fish after we'd drifted well out of the area where these big bass were holding, looked around to make sure there wasn't anyone to see me lift the fish, and hoisted her into the boat. She was a beauty. She was everything she needed to be, really.

It was mine turn next, and the fish did exactly what I was worried in the back of my mind they would do. They left! We didn't find that school or any other big school of large bass before the sun set. I caught a smaller fish and lost one that was probably pretty big, but not enough so to be upset about for an extended period of time. But, in the end, one is enough, and I was very happy to have taken part in the capture of that fish. Big bass are just different. I love schoolies for their willing nature and aggressive nature, sometimes goofy behavior, and beautiful coloration. But big bass... they are more like a proper big animal. I tend to use low grunting noises in association with gestures to describe the size of a large striper instead of just words. Because they are big, lumbering, hulking animals. The biggest bass are almost scary, like being in the water with a hungry one might be a bad idea somehow. And yet they are so picky, and so hard to find, and so skittish. I love getting to see them slam a hookless topwater plug with reckless abandon, and yet I also love to see them refuse a fly and spook too. I want them to be around for as long as I am and much longer. 

So please submit comments on Draft Addendum VI, and demand that more be done than what it proposes. The clock is ticking. 

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

 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. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, Elizabeth, and Christopher, for supporting this blog.

Finding the Elusive Eastern Hognose Snake

Bear with me, fishy people, for this post is not about fish. 

It's no secret that I'm an all around nature nut. I always have been. I have my mother and father to thank for that. If you've been reading this blog long enough you also know I'm head over heals in love with herps of all kinds. Turtles, frogs, salamanders, all of um. I can't get enough. But I often gravitate to animals that are much maligned. It's certainly a reason for the amount of time I spend talking up fish like bowfin, carp, gar, and lamprey. But years and years before my fish obsession, I latched onto snakes like a northern water snakes latches onto my arm when I grab it! 

Snakes are one of the most horribly treated, most widely mis-understood, and simultaneously the most important groups of animals on the planet. I have handled snakes pretty since I was in kindergarten. And though some passions of mine have cone and gone, the nature ones always stick. As with fishing, I am eternally looking for the next great snake. 

So. When my mother described a snake to me that perfectly matched a juvenile Eastern hognose snake, I had to go back to the site as soon as possible. Hognose are some of the most elusive snakes in the state. I had never gotten to see one. And females produce so many young that we could be in with a chance to see another. The first pass of the spot and the surrounding area produced no snakes, but an awesome beefy katydid.

Eastern sheildback katydid

On the way back through the are of the previous sighting I flipped a slab of granite pegmatite and found a cute little spotted salamander.

Ambystoma maculatum

We said goodbye and let it return into its home, then set about examining the immediate area of my mom's sighting. I rolled one stone, nothing, then moved to lift another. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a slithering grey checkered thingy... I grabbed it. Less then a second's observation and I knee it was what we were there for. This was undoubtedly the most adorable little snake I'd ever caught! Stout and seemingly built more for power than convenient locomotion, and with the perpetual smile-like appearance caused by its namesake upturned nose, this little runt was one of those snakes I quickly gravitated too.

Heterodon platirhinos

Unfortunately, for many people the reaction to their first encounter with a hognose goes very differently. These snakes are kings of the bluff. When approached by a big, menacing predator, they flatten out their head and neck, mimicking the broad-headed pit vipers that are the only native venomous snakes in most of their range: copperheads, cottonmouths, and rattlesnakes. Then they hiss, the loudest hiss you are likely to hear from a local snake. Eventually, of none of this works, they will start to flop around, roll onto their back, and open their mouth, playing dead. If provoked to strike, they rarely if ever actually bite, just whacking with its nose. This little guy struck at me twice. My response was just to giggle. Their bluffs often don't get the intended retreat from human being, which assume they are venomous and promptly smash them or chop them up. Which, to be completely clear, is NEVER an appropriate action to take on any snake, venomous or not, even if it's inside your home.
This is a real shame. Spend a couple minutes with one of these snakes an you can't help but enjoy their charisma and all bark-no-bite attitude. It took a little bit to get this guy to do any of the fear responses. I am probably the first thing to get this young stud to hiss, and it was so  awesome to see and hear such a noise coming from such a tiny snake!

There's one thing that I hope comes across in this blog, and it's my reverence for all of nature. If a little of this rubs off on one or two of you... I'll be very happy.
Hognose are one of a number of snakes that could be locally extinct before I die. If you don't care... I'm sorry for you. You have no clue what you are missing.

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

 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. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, Elizabeth, and Christopher, for supporting this blog.

My Comments on Draft Addendum VI

ASMFC's Striped Bass Draft Addendum VI proposes regulations to address the current overfishing of the Atlantic striped bass stock. The public hearing have already taken place in CT and most other states. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend CT's or RI's hearings. The following is my comment on Draft Addendum VI, sent to comments@asmfc.org. I strongly recommend at least briefly reading through the draft addendum before reading this. (Atlantic Striped Bass Draft Addendum VI)

My name is Rowan Lytle. I'm a 22 year old fish addict that never had to see the striped bass population at its worst, but never got to see it at its best either. I've not been striper fishing long. I won't pretend to know all the ins and outs of the fishery. But I do pay as much attention as I can. I talk to people who have been watching far longer than I. And even in the short time I have partaken in this fishery, I have seen the quality diminish. The data supports what I've seen and what the most experienced people I've met say. And I think I can speak for a lot of us in saying that the measures proposed in this draft addendum fall well short of what this fishery need.

Any measure that only results in a 50/50 chance of success is frustrating for us to see. We need to have a much higher standard than that. This commission's only real tangible success was restoring the striped bass stocks after the last big crash. I'd think it wouldn't want to drag its only successfully saved fishery down by implementing measures that are as apt to fail as they are to succeed when the opportunity was there to implement stronger measures.

The only measures proposed by Addendum VI that I support are as follows:

Option 2: Equal 18% percent Reductions of quota on recreational and commercial sectors
Sub-Option 2A-1 -1 fish at 35” for the Coast Ocean Recreational Fishery
Sub-Option 2B-1- 1 Fish at 18” for the Chesapeake Bay
Option 3.2.B Mandatory use of non-offset circle hooks

These measures should go a long way to protecting the strong 2015 year class, but should not be maintained so long that once that year class reaches legal size they then get decimated. With such poor reproductive yields some years and great yields others, keeping the size and limits the same can shift fishing pressure on and off the most important and at-risk stocks within fairly short time spans. I know it's a lot to ask of this extremely slow moving commission, but if regulations don't consistently change in accordance to strong and week year classes and spawning stock biomass, there will be no way of getting out of this population crash without another moratorium. Because fishing pressure is far from the only pressure impacting this species, I don't foresee a way to properly manage these fish for many years to come without changing the regulations periodically.

Also, it is my concern that new regulations will do very little when so many doesn't pay attention to them. Without strong penalties and enforcement, a fish that tastes good and costs a lot at market is going to be severely poached. A state can even go drastically over quota in a given year and not get any sort of push-back whatsoever. That is unfair to us and unfair to the fish, and shows that this commission may as well just be for show. 

Finally, since the mortality of released fish is a clear concern, mandatory circle hooks will help but are not enough. States should at least be strongly encouraged, if not required, to advocate for good, scientifically based fish handling and release practices. Encouraging use of single barbless hooks would also be a very good idea, and I wouldn't be opposed to an outright ban of barbed treble hooks for use on striped bass. Closing mid winter and mid summer seasons would also decrease the number of bass that would expire after being released. Seeing as a number of states already have closed seasons to protect bass at their most vulnerable, this has precedence. 

If I ever have children and even grandchildren, I would very much like to be able to take them to places I've fished for striped bass over the last four years. And I'd very much like to be able to point out a big striper blitz and say "See that? See how beautiful that is? This is better than it was when I was a kid. This is the healthiest this fishery has ever been."

My confidence that I will be able to do that, to see that, wanes every day. 

This is not enough. DO YOUR JOB. Protect this fishery.

Thank you for allowing an avenue to comment on this addendum.

Whether you did or did not go to one of the public hearings, please submit a comment if you care about these fish and want to see this kind of thing at least as often as we get to now:

Submit comments by email to comments@asmfc.org with the subject line "Striped Bass Draft Addendum VI" before 5 pm on October 7th. Thank you.

Behold the Blitz

With the pattern shifting towards cooler or just straight up cold nights, bait has begun filtering out of the estuaries and onto the shore front. The waters of Southern New England were already absolutely saturated with small bait and a lot of predators eating them, but in the middle of the month the first batch of albies entered long island sound, peanut bunker, juvenile bluefish, and herring started to leave the tidal creaks, and bass were there to meet them.  Mike Carl and I bounced around spots one morning looking for the hot and heavy bite we knew would be going on somewhere, finding nothing exciting in the first few spots. In the pocket between two jetties at one spot, some bass were occasionally going in on a big school of peanuts, but the ratio point Noah and I coined the " Triple P" or "Predator to Peanut Proportion" was off... too many juvenile menhaden, not enough bass. 

Then, at a spot I'd never really gotten into a good bite in, we walked onto the beach to see a blitz in progress. For the next few hours we had bass working schools of bunker and herring (not sure what species, certainly not Atlantic, possibly juvenile shad or alewives, but definitely not all menhaden). The worked amongst some rocks just offshore and occasionally pushed up into either of two pockets on either side of a rocky point. For a brief time, the were right on the end of the point itself, and from my high vantage point there I could see that there were some proper fish in the mix, 35 to 40 inch bass. Did I spend too much time photographing the action and miss my chance at one of the bigger girls? Maybe. But I don't regret it.

I stood on the point during a lull, casting to the occasional cruising fish in front of me. Then I looked to the pocket to my west and saw whitewater, big slashes, and bait spraying. I took off at a dead sprint down the beach. I got there out of breath, pulled out my camera to get a couple shots. These were larger fish with no tiny ones mixed in. I slipped my camera back into my bag and turned around to see that they were now right in front of me. They stayed in tight in just long enough for me to catch two over 27", not the biggest but the largest bass I'd caught in a while.

We had fish within range on and off right through the middle of the day. It was wonderful. Of course I'm a big fish guy and wasn't satisfied with what I caught, but I was satisfied to have been in the thick of it all. Not that I can afford to be picky really, but I prefer my big bass either blind casting to structure or at night, not from a blitz. That's just me.

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

 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. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, Elizabeth, and Christopher, for supporting this blog.

Plop and Drop

We've settled into a drought again, and most streams are pretty much everything is very low. Fortunately though the dry conditions have been accompanied by some chilly nights, so the small stream fishing remains decent. 

Under the typical low water conditions we get just about every early fall here, the game is often convincing fish out of heavy cover, be it cut banks or logjams. Small stream brown and brook trout often react to things impacting the surface of the stream. It happens a lot, and can signal a number of things, the two most important being food and danger. Make a fly "plop" into the water, not too hard and not too soft, and it may attract the attention a fish tucked way into cover. As such, I typically fish small streamers with bead or cone heads that hit the water with just enough of a plop to attract attention, but not so much that it spooks every fish, and reaches the bottom of the water column quickly. Often enough, the fly will get slammed before it reaches the bottom. If it doesn't, I strip it in quite rapidly. Takes are rarely anything less than violent.

A little while back I fished a stretch of stream nicknamed by Alan "The  Outback", a piece of water loaded with undercuts, woody debris, and predatory brown trout. The perfect place for plopping streamers. The fishing wasn't fast and furious, and I didn't catch the sort of size I was hoping to, but I'd catch a handful of good looking wild brown trout in quick succession, then go a while without any.

With a few even colder nights recently, there are a number of places I'm looking forward to visiting. It's getting to be big trout season again. It's also my favorite time of year to night fish. So assume I'm doing a bit of that even if you don't see it here.

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

 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. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, Elizabeth, and Christopher, for supporting this blog.

The Year's First Little Tunny

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

No, not Christmas, Fall. 

In the fall along the shoreline in Southern New England, life is as concentrated as it can ever be. And it doesn't last long. There's a sense of urgency to this time of year, the idea that if you skip out on even two days in a row you've missed something remarkable. In a sense that's true, you'd be hard pressed to find a day in September or October during which somewhere between New York City and Provincetown there isn't something remarkable transpiring.

Maximizing time is paramount. 

The window to catch false albacore lasts two months if we're lucky, and overlaps some of prime times to target big bass. As such, I like to try to get as many albies early on in the run as possible. So far so good this year, I've targeted them exactly once and got two...

In 12 hours of fishing. 

Some days are just brutal. This past Saturday was frustrating because I was trying to get my friend Brandon on his first hardtails and the deck just wasn't stacked in our favor. I'd hoped the forecast for relatively reasonable wind and swell would verify, it ended up being really sporty out there for two kayakers. It wasn't dangerous, really, it just made it almost impossible to fish. That really sucked, because there were a ton of bonito and Spanish mackerel around and we just couldn't catch them. We ended up leaving CT after a few schoolies and cocktail blues. We bounced east, bumped into Phil Sheffield at one of the inlets, saw very little life, the got to the West Wall to a few bent rods. It was a blind casting day, fish showed very little. But they were around, and we got shots. I was able to capitalize on them. Brandon was not. That was probably as frustrating for me as it was for him, especially since I know how this works. I watched him try to rationalize why he wasn't catching knowing full well that the reasons were too minute for me to just explain them, him to get it, then just start catching. A beginner has nothing to place confidence in except what people around them are doing, and I wasn't on any sort of pattern my two fish came on two different flies and the two other fish I missed took two other different flies. Time spent changing flies, thinking about flies, thinking about depth, thinking about line, thinking about tippet, or moving around just takes one's mind away from the task at hand. That task, very simply in the scenario that often occurs at the wall, is to make long casts and fast two hand retrieves until your arms are ready to fall off and be constantly mentally prepared for little tunny to grab the fly and to deal with the chaos that will follow. 

We were on the wall for six hours. I stopped casting for brief spells, in part because I didn't feel the need to catch a bunch of fish, partly because I had to write the previous blog post, and partly because it's exhausting and I wanted to fish the next couple days without arm and back pain.

After a while we made a move to where I knew some fish would set up on the incoming tide and launched kayaks again. We got a couple shots but not good ones. We got off the water just before sunset. This season beats the piss out of me, mentally and physically, but I'd put more time in if I could. I was one the water from 9:00 to 2:30 today, I'd be there right now if I could, and at dawn tomorrow. If I had a vehicle right now, I'd basically be living in it and driving wherever the stripers and albies take me from late August to mid November, with stops to work in between bites.
Life doesn't last. The fall run is a microcosm of that.

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

 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. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, Elizabeth, and Christopher, for supporting this blog.

Searching for Big Spring Creek Brook Trout

Spring creeks are rare, well, most parts of the world, but there certainly aren't many in the Northeast. I found one though, about five years ago, and it turned out to be the most remarkable brook trout stream I'd ever fished in southern New England. Shrouded in heavy undergrowth, difficult to access, and appearing like nothing more special than a warm, weedy, muddy ditch, my spring creek hides itself well and even for those curious enough to attempt to fish it, the abundant thorn bushes and ticks and extraordinarily skittish brook trout are enough to send them packing. 

I'm not easily deterred though, and after seeing some of the largest wild brook trout I'd ever seen in the state, I was bound to be a regular visitor to this place.

In the years I've fished it though, I've still yet to catch a Brook trout quite like I've been seeking. Make no mistake, brook trout they may be, but a spring creek trout is a spring creek trout. They are not easy.

Every trip I make I catch some, but I also spook others that I'd taken as much as 10 minutes approaching to even a difficult casting distance. Easy doesn't exist here. On my most recent trip I had made out with a good number of fish but spooked more 14 to 18 inch brook trout than most dedicated CT small stream anglers will get a chance at in 10 years. I've accepted the fact that my catching one of the biggest fish here will be as much up to luck as it will be skill.

A substantial and handsome beetle eater.

Part of this is up to the population density of the stream. There are so many brook trout that they can't help but school, and there's only so many fish you can pull out of a school before they stop feeding. There's no magical way to pull the biggest out of a school, and there's often a 16 inch fish with ten 8-11 inch fish and thirty 3-6 inch fish. Getting the 16 to eat first isn't a skill, it isn't down to fly selection, it isn't down to anything but chance.

With fall very much here, however, I know an opportunity will arise to target the largest fish. It's something I've only hit right on one occasion and didn't capitalize on. Hopefully this year the deck will be stacked in my favor.

The colors of the Edson Tiger don't differ that much from the colors of the fish that ate it. 

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

 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. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, Elizabeth, and Christopher, for supporting this blog.

CT Bonito and Spanish Mackerel

The albies are taking their sweet time getting into Long Island Sound this year. They've been around the Cape for a while now, and in Rhode Island for at least a week. I know a few pods have wandered into CT waters but not enough to reliably go out and find them. For me, the lack of albies hasn't been a disappointment. They typically out-compete the other pelagic species and push them out of the sound, though in years past there'd often be another shot at bonito right at the end of the hardtail season. So for at least a little while longer, there are bonito around. But of greater interest to me is the even less frequent visitor to CT waters that has showed in force this early fall: Atlantic Spanish mackerel. In three trips to Florida I'd never really gotten a shot at Spanish, despite having been in a lot of places they'd be likely to show up. This year they started appearing along New Jersey in late June. Then on Long Island, Cape Cod, the islands, Rhode Island in August. At the start of September some had made their way into Long Island Sound. I kept missing the bite though or just not making it to the shore on good days. I was worried that Dorian would push the albies in had and I'd miss my chance. Turns out, it actually pushed more Spanish mackerel in instead. Two days after the storm passed Noah and I set out in search of scombrids not really knowing exactly what we'd find. Before we even launched though we could see bonito and Spanish leaping and breaking. Between staring at the water and rushing to get out there, I'm not sure how much time we wasted. But I do know that we both got bonito on pretty much our first casts. Mine absolutely ripped off, putting up the hardest fight I've had from a bonito, almost making me think it might be an albie or at least a much bigger bone. It ended up just being the same small size fish that we've had around.

These fish were actually in quite shallow water, ambushing a school of silversides that as holding over a patch of eel grass. We could see the grass patch, which was excellent because it afforded us the opportunity to stick to that spot and just wait for the hardtails to come blasting into the bait again. Noah hooked up next, and it was a Spanish mackerel. Of course the guy who has already caught the species is the one that gets the first one of the day!

I wasn't too worried  though as the short chaotic blitzes kept erupting over our little grass patch. Often, these fish were less than five feet from us. It was wild and beautiful. 

I hooked up next and of course it was another bonito. I was starting to worry. Little did I know, by day's end I'd have more of that species than I'd ever have thought I'd get a shot at in CT waters.

Our grass patch bite kind of fizzled out eventually, and we moved out into deeper water where we'd seen fish before. As we did so I glanced southwest and saw a cloud of birds. We hurried in that direction and in a short time I could see the fish breaking. We got there just in time for the action to fizzle out, of course. I decided to hang around there for a bit though as I'd encountered clouds of bait in the same area every year, seemingly for no reason at all but always in the same small patch of deep water. Noah decided he wanted to go check out another spot. I decided to stay. It wasn't that long after we'd parted ways when the fish came back up again. I got into them fairly quickly and hooked up to the third bonito of the day. As I fought that fish the school basically followed me, blowing up at arms reach all around my kayak. I boated and released that bonito as quick as I could and was hooked up again on the very next cast. 

Noah got back over just in time for one brief shot at the bonito, and then they didn't come up heavy again for a while though there were stray boils and leaps. We blind cast, and both got takes from what were almost certainly Spanish, then again I looked Southwest and saw birds. Again Noah and I headed different directions, but by this time things didn't really get going hard until he caught back up to me and now it was all Spanish. I finally added this wacky, beautiful species to my lifelist. 

Lifelist fish #141, Atlantic Spanish mackerel, Scomberomorus maculatus, Rank: Species

After that fish the floodgates opened. Noah and I hammered Spanish for the rest of the evening. It was incredible hardtail fishing. This ended up being far and away the best day targeting scombrids I'd ever had. We both caught tons of Spanish. I very quickly learned that, unlike bonito which have rounded teeth, Spanish mackerel have quite sharp teeth. They destroyed my flies and damaged my leader.

Fortunately these buggers weren't super abundant, they do more damage than the mackerel.

These were only little ones unfortunately so they weren't really that good a fight on a 10wt, frankly the bonito kicked their butts and they aren't that impressive either. We pretty much left them chewing in that spot for our own safety as the sun set. I got one striper and a couple bluefish on the way back in, and we shark fished after dark, but it wasn't anything to write home about. It did mean I didn't get much sleep though, so I was pretty tired when Rick and I headed out to fish the same area the next morning. The conditions were different, and though they were behaving a bit differently the fish were still there. The fly rod proved to be the winning tool this time, far out performing spinning. 

This time, a few went in the cooler. I botched the 2nd fillets a bit on the first and second fish. The fist fish especially. But the meat was remarkably white for a hardtail. These fish have got Bonito beat in terms of food quality, at least by my tastes. Broiled they were delicious. I might try some pan seared next time.

There's about two more weeks during which encounters with crazy exotic fish are possible. I'm hoping to run into at least a few more new species in the coming month. 

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

 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. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, Elizabeth, and Christopher, for supporting this blog.