Housatonic Smallmouth Bass Beatdown

 Back before all the rain brought the river up to atypical summer levels, Noah and I hit the Housatonic looking for as many smallmouth as we could catch. That is precisely what we encountered. 

The conditions were ideal for both numbers and size. It was hot and humid, and thunderstorms were predicted that afternoon. The water temperature was in the low 70's. The flow was down enough that we could wade just about anywhere we wanted. The fish were appropriately fired up. Actually, it was just downright crazy. It was the best day of smallmouth fishing I'd ever had.

We hooked fish after fish in each hole we plied. Noah fished small jigs with soft plastics, I fished streamers. The most productive fly, far and away, was the Half Pint. I think it does a decent job of looking like, well, food. It looks kind of like a crayfish, a lot like a darter, a bit like a bluntnose minnow, and quite a bit like a yearling smallmouth. Whatever it looks like, smallmouth like it.

The average size was phenomenal. The fish above is typically the average- and sometimes a bit above average -on the 'tonic. On this day small fish, bass under 11", were a notable minority. Fish averaged about 13", with a noteworthy quantity well in excess of that number. 

Noah and I both managed to lose fish in excess of 18" though. That was painful, as many go a long, long time without seeing a true Housatonic 18". 

Noah's 18" ate in a deep, fast run. It performed a single jump then shook off. Mine ate in even faster water. It was an extremely visual eat. The fly had been riding deep in the slow crease beyond a very fast current tongue, and when I could no longer manage slack and the line came tight, it quickly rose towards the surface and began to swing. The fish followed it up and ate it in full view in a quite violent fashion. It was nuts. And of course she somehow managed to shake off well into the fight.

Aside from those two moments of heartbreak it was as good a day of bass fishing as one could hope to have on this water. Truly crazy, nonstop, absolute chaos. 

Eventually Noah actually started to get tired of it. We'd exceeded 45 smallmouth apiece by that point, so it was at least a bit understandable. We tried to shift gears a bit. What followed will be the subject of a different post. 

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, Geof, Luke, and Noah for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

Evening Scupfest

 More and more often, porgies are switching from a frequent plan B to a regular plan A when I go to the salt. If not the primary target themselves, at least one of them. Catching porgies is fun, and even more fun is catching porgies on the fly. I love figuring out how to consistently get a species on the fly, especially one that isn't as regularly targeted with flies. That said it really shouldn't have taken me as long as it did to learn how to best get scup. It's really very simple. I'm still honing things in though, as converting take too hookups and hookups to boated fish is proving the most difficult.

A warm day last week presented a good opportunity. I found some time, loaded up the kayak, and made my way to the sound. My paddle out put me right past a school of schoolie stripers breaking on very tiny peanut bunker. I took a couple casts at them, but left hurriedly. I was after a different fish. I would be fishing 12 to 18 feet of water with a sink tip and size 6 Clousers for something a bit less popular.

Of course there's more to scup than just dropping a fly to the bottom. Fish don't hold just everywhere and anywhere. Sometimes it almost seems like that, but it isn't true. Certain contours and structure hold fish, more fish, or bigger fish. I'll leave it up to you to figure out the complexities of that if you decide to fly fish for porgies. That's the fun part. The presentation is simple, almost a cross between nymphing and swinging a wet fly. The takes feel like little thump, often rapid fire. They usually come thick and fast when I'm fishing the right water.

It was a beautiful evening to be out on the water, though the smoke blowing in from the west was a part of that and quite unfortunate. The sunset reflecting off of the iridescent flanks of the porgies was gorgeous though. They really are a very pretty fish. 

With very few inshore blues in recent years and generally sporadic striper fishing, it's definitely worth looking to other fish species. Hopefully they won't ever need to be everyone's plan A, but for now I'm having blast with porgies. 

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, Geof, Luke, and Noah for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Electric Summer Walleye

 We've obviously had a lot of rain this summer, more than we've had here in a long time. Some of it has come along with some beautiful night-time light shows. I've been interested in chasing severe weather for far longer than I've fished, and this season I've had some good chases and some busts. Notably last week I made a very poor forecast and missed an incredible supercell. A few nights, though, I've been able to stay at home- the storms came to me. One night- just after the tropical remnants -I had a pretty good show just to the north. I did kinda poorly behind the lens but didn't go completely empty handed. 

Another advantage of big rain is a slight improvement in summer land-based walleye fishing. Overall, summer is a poor time for getting walleye on the fly locally. Heavy rain can lead to a quick reprieve though, drawing walleye into shallow water for a short time. As the lightning activity declined that night I made my way to a reliable walleye spot.

The fishing was slow,. Dreadfully slow. Even in March I get pretty good bycatch, usually. I was surprised to go a half hour without a take from any fish of any sort. Then along came a long snake of a walleye to make my night. 

Walleye are sneaky little bastards, often making their way in and out of the water, I can reasonably expect to catch them on fly in mere hours. It has taken a pretty long time to dial places in well enough to be able to catch them almost on command. They are very habitual though, so once I was able to determine patterns it got much easier. That goes for most fish, though. Take that into consideration when you have a successful outing. It is probably repeatable. 

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, Geof, Luke, and Noah for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

Gorilla Dry Fly Fishing for Carp

 Sometimes there's plenty of room to make a long, beautiful fly cast and present to a visibly feeding fish. Those moments can be glorious. Oftentimes though, my fishing is more akin to gorilla warfare. I have to put on a stalk in heavy brush and make short, difficult casts in very tight quarters. This can be viewed in a few ways. Some may look at it as a strategically complex, skillful expression of angling prowess. 

I look at it, at least when I do it, as a boneheaded refusal to let hard to reach, easy to spook fish go about feeding without being harassed. There are some fish I will happily let be. I'm happy to leave some brook trout alone, and schoolie stripers are allowed free passage more often than not. Shallow feeding carp though are fish I refuse to let rest. I either spook them or I jam a bit of metal into their mouth. Such was the case on a recent jaunt over in berryville. I had plenty of easy shots and many fish to hand already- in fact it was a phenomenal day of fishing. 

Huge tail on this one, and nearly flawless.

Every fish was on the dry and every fish was a mirror. This is precisely what I've come to expect at this locale. But then I spotted this one fish, clearly a common, rooting vigorously in the gravel. She was a prime target... she was also behind a thick wall of Japanese knotweed. I'd have to insert myself into the weeds and present the fly at rod tip. When I say at rod tip, I mean exactly that- I couldn't cast at all, I'd have to present the fly with less than a foot of tippet outside the rod tip. More like 5 inches, honestly. Doing this sort of presentation was not remotely easy though, as there were loads of vegetation to catch up in. And of course as soon as the fish was on it would be pure chaos. 

Somehow the whole gambit went without error, and I was suddenly basically jumping through a thick wall of weeds right into the water to fight the fish. This reminded me of scenes from a British fishing series Passion for Angling, featuring Chris Yates and Bob James. Most of my readers, being American fly anglers, may not recognize this title. Currently, carp fishing seems to have drifted towards a very systematic but relaxed form. Passion for Angling features some scenes of quite intense stalking. In the episode "Redmire Legends," a carp is stalked and hooked from up in a tree, followed by Chris and Bob jumping out into the pond to land the fish. I felt like I was reenacting that scene to some degree. My little common was not so big as their fish, but a lovely specimen nonetheless. 

With the way I've become obsessed with carp fishing again, I suspect I'll be engaging in plenty more close combat gorilla carp fishing in the near future. It isn't glamorous from the typical angles fly fishing is looked at, where elegant casts and clear, fast flowing rivers are held as the gold standard... but you know what? This is more fun than that. I don't care who says otherwise. I'll forever be grateful to carp, as they were the fish that opened up the world of large, non-traditional fish on the fly. 

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, Geof, Luke, and Noah for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

Fishing Underwater

 Years ago I found a video of an angler catching a nice smallmouth bass on an ice fishing rod. None of those aspects made the video at all special. What was so remarkable is that the fish was caught while scuba diving... the man was in the water with the fish, fully submerged. It ate the jig mere feet from the guy. 

That video sparked a bit of interest in both me and Noah, interest we never acted on... until one hot day in July we decided to go fishing underwater. We launched his skiff on a clear, deep central CT lake and rigged up the tip sections of our fly rods, ready to meet the fish in their own territory instead of bringing them into ours. We set out to anchor the boat near a rock reef, then jumped out and began to fish in a way we'd never fished before.

This proved to be the most noteworthy learning experience I've had in a long time. Actually seeing the behavior of the fish in that sort of clarity from within their environment was distinctly different even from watching them in clear water from above the surface. One of the particularly interesting aspects was that every fish, regardless of species, was less weary of our presence than the would have been if we were above the water's surface. I don't know how this will apply to other fish species in fresh an saltwater, but the observations of spear fisherman seem to indicate that most saltwater species won't really care. 

Getting fish to eat was not complex. Changing flies or hooks- or re-baiting, for that matter -while swimming was an interesting new challenge. Setting the hook was different as well: more like a jab than anything. Strip setting obviously wasn't an option with a poke-pole, nor was swinging. We had to fight water resistance. Fighting the fish was interesting too. Having a smallmouth jumping above me while I was in the water looking up was one of the strangest things I've experienced in fishing.

 We also got a much deeper understanding of where fish held on different structure. We fished/dove reefs, islands, and docks, and instead of simply catching or not catching fish on those spots as we would were we to stay in the boat, we saw where fish were and how the were behaving far more intricately. Fish aren't just anywhere on a stone reef; being in the water seeing hing let us find undercuts, slopes, and holes that weren't visible from above the surface. 

This trip was really just the start, this is something we're going to explore quite a bit more. Clearly it will have some serious revelations. 

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, Geof, Luke, and Noah for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

40 Pound Striped Bass on the Fly

 Last year I joined my friends on the Knot On Call for a trip seeking cow striped bass. Many very large striped bass were caught on that trip, including the biggest fish I'd ever caught. However, none of the fish I caught were on the fly. That was really what I wanted to accomplish out there... a really huge striped bass on fly. Not just a nice 35 incher, not even just a 40 incher. I wanted to get a bass over 40 pounds on the fly. I had one big fish on the fly rod that trip. She came unbuttoned shortly after the hookup. That got the gears turning, and through the rest of the year I was tinkering, saving up for appropriate gear, and thinking through my strategies. I was determined to accomplish this goal. 

When Joe told me to keep a specific weekend open in early July, I did. It looked like it would be a interesting one. The remnants of a tropical cyclone ripped through the northeast at a high rate of speed the morning before we'd planned to go, roiling the Atlantic into a what may as well have been a gigantic washing machine. Joe and I are both forecasters- he far better than I -and we both felt convinced the swell would calm down and give us a window to make it to the bass filled waters off Block Island. 

So it was that I left my partner's apartment the night after the storm, but not before having her kiss a couple of my flies (and of course me) for good luck. I met Joe, Boots, Doc, and Justin around midnight at the boat launch. Lightning punctuated our conversation and a couple brief showers complicated the launching process. It was calm and sheltered where we were, but out near Block the seas were still very angry. We anchored behind an island and got some sleep on the boat. We quietly rocked in the fog, trying to catch as much rest as we could before the sun got us up. 

In the morning, we tentatively set out to fish. We worked our way around local spots initially, trolling and blind casting a bit, looking for activity. As conditions slowly improved we headed towards Montauk, then finally towards Block. We saw a mako and a small humpback whale on the way, but no fish picked up the plug or umbrella rig we trolled. 

Once we reached our intended destination, the conditions were beautiful. The sun came out and the seas flattened. Soon, some bass started to show themselves. Live eels took the first fish, followed shortly by GT Eel soft plastics. I got takes fairly soon out of the gate. I missed two that likely were bass and dropped a third due to a dull hook (shame on me), but wasn't really feeling the love just yet. It was agonizing to slug it out with the fly rod while the guys around me were hitting good fish with relative regularity. I stuck to my guns though, I knew that the only way I would get a huge bass on the fly was to stick with the fly.

Doc with a big girl, tagged

Evening came along and I was still fishless. I started to question things, I wondered if I was making errors in presentation or fly selection. At times we were over so many fish it seemed absurd that I couldn't get bit. The bottom was paved with cows. There seemed to be massive schools pushing south, as though the hurricane had moved them inshore and they were heading back out. Fish even started showing on the surface feeding on sand eels. I was still not feeling quite like I was fishing effectively, and I didn't have a clear solution to the problems I felt I was having. Eventually, while retrieving my fly rapidly behind the boat, I asked "F*** it, can I have an egg sinker? The smallest one possible". It was precisely then that my luck changed as a big bass chase the fly up into the prop wash and ate it right there behind the boat. She thrashed violently, head above water and gills flared. She looked gigantic. In that moment the mood on the boat shifted drastically. The guys had all been backing me up on my mission to get this fish, and it was now going to be a team effort to get her in the boat. 

Since she'd eaten the fly so close to the boat, I had a ton of line at my feet. Getting it on the reel was going to be a struggle. Though this fish could certainly run far enough to get all of that line out, I couldn't afford to let her do so. The bottom here was filled with giant boulders, and cow bass know how to wrap line around them and break off. I had to keep that fish off the bottom, which was 35 feet down. When she dove, and she most certainly did, I couldn't let up at all. I had to stop her. I'm proud to say I did. All the while, Joe and Boots were clearing the line for me as the fish forced me to move across the stern. After the fish spent about a minute and a half digging hard, she suddenly decided to come up. For a few very tense moments I though she might be off, but for whatever reason she'd just decided to spend the last bit of the fight up top. That really gave me the upper hand, and after just one short circle I had her up and ready and Joe got the net under her. It was done. Less than four minutes and I'd beat that fish. 12wt fly rod, 40lb trilene leader, 6/0 sand eel Flashtail Clouser... 46 inch 40 pound striped bass. 

Russ Zivkovich Photo

We tagged her. We released her strong. She's hopefully still out there pigging out on sand eels. It will be remarkable to see if anyone reports capturing that fish. Hopefully anyone that does treats her right. 

At that point I was about as happy as I've ever been. I've been seeking a striped bass of that caliber for some time now, and if anything I thought it would likely take me longer to accomplish it. There's no crew I'd rather have done it with either. It may be easier to fly fish on a boat with one or two other fly fishers, but I wasn't coming at this task from a fly angler's mindset. Most fly casters don't get shots at bass of this caliber, at least not often. I found it more pertinent to look at what the guys catching these fish consistently were doing. Few boats and crews out there are as successful. I owe these guys a lot, I couldn't have accomplished this without them. 

For now, that's that. The rest of the trip went well minus a possible world record (not a bass) that I lost. Loads more big fish were caught. But for me the trip had already hit its climax. It's been more than a week and I've still got the jitters. 

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, Geof, Luke, and Noah for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Geoff's Commons

 One day I had my good friend Geoff Klane (Brackish Flies) tag along with me to experience the mulberry chaos. I'd told him just how abundant the mirrors were in Rhode Island and how good the fishing had been. I fairly certain we had a pretty stellar bite ahead of us. Fish have a very interesting sense of humor though.

We cast at some tailers before we got to any berry trees and I did get one of them to eat. It was a perfect little mirror, precisely what I'd expected and how I'd expected. Even though Geoff's time was limited I was sure we'd get him his first mirror. At the first tree there were geese, and Geoff missed one take. That seemed to put the fish off. At the next, he got... a common. I'd caught more than a dozen carp in Rhode Island before I got the first common so that was a bit of a surprise. Even more surprising still, his second fish was also a common. 

Since commons aren't actually so common here, I thought Geoff's fish were pretty cool. Of course we both still really wanted a mirror, so it was really frustrating when the terrible hook I'd tied the berry fly he was fishing bent out on a good one. Reminder: even small carp will tow the nicest brown trout you've ever caught backwards for miles- don't use mediocre hooks.

Frustratingly, that was that. I'll definitely have Geoff back though and I'm sure he'll get his mirror.

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, Geof, Luke, and Noah for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.