Quality Bass in Sloppy Weather

I met Andrew at the launch early one morning expecting to have a decent shot at finding some tunny without having to go very far, which would be a good thing considering the impending east wind. The waters would be rough that day and we wouldn't find a darned thing close to our chosen launch. This was particularly disappointing since we did find fish very close to another launch that we could just as easily have used. 

Some days I predict things well, some days I don't. This was one of those days where I could have planned things out much better for us and had us on good sized stripers earlier and longer. But perhaps I should take the fact that we got on them at all as a significant positive. We worked our way steadily west from where we launched, finding clouds of bait that weren't being touched at all, before pulling alongside a mud flat and watching a nice bass smash and adult bunker just 70 feet away. I quickly pulled out the big flies and we went at it. I lost the first fish I hooked, which is a bummer because it was almost certainly in the 40 inch class. We had no time to feel dejected though, because we then had a little window of time where it was a hit every cast, and most of the fish were really good ones. 

There's an old saying: "wind from the east, fish bite least."

On this day that didn't seem to be true. With a howling east wind we had bass cartwheeling over flies for a good little while. I could barely get a white Popovics Beast Fleye in the water before a slot sized bass was on top of it. It was exceptionally good, fast fishing. 

I find that slot sized stripers feeding on or around big bunker are much, much easier to get on the fly than very large bass, which have a perfectly easy time swallowing something far larger than the largest adult menhaden. The slot sized fish, though, have a somewhat tough time getting such a large baitfish in their mouth, so they hoover down a fly a lot more readily than would otherwise be expected from, say, a 40 pounder. 

All good things must come to an end though, and so did this bite window. It ended far earlier than I would have appreciated, frankly. I could do battle with stripers of this size all day long. I was actually using my new White River Fly Shop Heat on this outing, a 7'10" 9wt. It's a cheap fly rod, but currently the only short fly rod on the market that I can afford, and at it's extremely inexpensive price point I'll try anything. Paired with the equally affordable Lamson Liquid and a SA Mastery Titan 10wt line, it's a very lightweight outfit with a good amount of backbone, and frankly it's a hand canon. I'm probably an above average fly caster but having no problem zipping out most of a fly line with a cheap Bass Pro Shops brand fly rod felt a bit wrong. It just proves two points I've known for years: fly setups don't need to be expensive, and fly rods don't need to be 9 feet long to cast well or far. I'm not going to go overboard and call the Heat a great fly rod- it has its flaws. But it's a work horse. I'll be utilizing it quite a bit. 

The ride back, straight up wind, was bumpy. It was worth the ride for those fish though. 

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.

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Edited by Cheyenne Terrien