Sea Robin Appreciation Day

 I'm back folks, and now wellll behind. For the next week or two this blog will still be stuck in summer. And one of my favorite things about summer is goofy orange fish with wings. I didn't spend as much time this summer getting rods bent by casting at sea robs as I sometimes do, but I did have a couple crazy bites. 

Sea robins get a lot of dislike, and frankly I am sick of it. More and more anglers are coming around, but I still find dead striped sea robins left on jetties and dumped on the side of the road regularly. It's disgusting and unacceptable, and as with any fish that meets a similar fate the reasons many anglers treat sea robins in such a manor are based in ignorance and silly entrenched misconceptions. Fluke anglers often hate sea robins as they are frequently the fish they catch most. Perhaps they have no idea that the fish they are releasing is every bit as good eating as the fluke they are after, and a far more sustainable fish to utilize?

Cleaning sea robins is intimidating, I can certainly confirm that. Filleting them is difficult, but well executed it does utilize enough of the meat. Perhaps a better way to do it is to basically turn the fish into a drumstick. This is the video, put out my "The Fisherman" magazine, that I used to learn how to clean sea robins: HOW TO: FILLET A SEA ROBIN.

If you like keeping and eating saltwater species and don't already eat sea robins perhaps you should! Diversifying our take and easing pressure off of over-harvested species like winter flounder, fluke, stripers, bluefish, and tautog can only benefit things. I've found that fresh sea robin bled and kept on ice tastes every bit as good as fluke, and there are certainly a lot more sea robins around. The species spawn repeatedly throughout the season, leading to their high abundance. However, responsible and conscious angler should release the very fat, large individuals. These are almost always egg filled females, and they'll bear no more meat than a male of the same length but lesser weight anyway. As with an fish holding onto a strong spawning stock is important; I'm promoting harvest not depletion. 

Another critique I hear about sea robins is that the are ugly. And, frankly, what!? That's just dumb. Look at these things. Look at the colors, look at their wings! Look at those cool little legs! I'll never understand the beauty standards anglers hold for fish. I think sea robins are one of the wildest, prettiest, coolest looking fish we have around here!

We should all learn to be a bit more appreciative of the fish species that aren't popular. Man of them fight hard, some of them taste good, some of them are just really really cool. All fish are important both as species and as individuals when present within their native range, and it's about time more anglers learned to know and respect ALL of the species the catch. 

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, Streamer Swinger, 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.

June Scup on the Fly

 I've become very interested in catching saltwater bottom fish on the fly in recent years. Scup, fluke, black seabass, tautog... they're not frequently targeted by fly anglers but most of the time they're perfectly willing to take a well presented artificial fly. My methodology has evolved, or rather simplified, withing about the last year to using simple sinking and sink tip lines with a pair of flies and fishing on slow drifts. I'd spent a lot of time trying to use all sorts of drop shot rigs and other such things, most of which proved to be effective at times. They were mostly unnecessary though. What I do now is akin to a typical Great Lakes steelhead and salmon "nymphing" swing, but with a far heavier line and in much deeper water. It works well though. 

Not long ago Noah and I went out for some of the first scup and fluke of the season. He'd already been out a couple times, but this was my first run of the year. He fished primarily with a cheb rig, which is something knew to us and a methodology I intend to apply to tautog in the fall. I was using my 400 grain sink tip, 12 foot leader to 12lb tippet, and a Clouser and worm fly, one tipped with a thing called "fish bites". Fish bites are an artificial attractant Noah had been experimenting with, and being artificial I didn't particularly think it was cheating. Nor do I really care if you do. It wasn't necessary but I did catch more fish because of it.

The fish were averaging pretty large, and most were extremely hefty. We're pretty sure many were gravid females. Though fought pretty well, even on a 10wt. Both Noah and I were having a lot of brief fights though, and having a pretty hard time keeping fish pinned. Had we landed even half of the fish we dropped it would have been a really stellar day, and it wasn't bad to start with. We even tripled up at one point. 

We also got a few other species out there, including a couple sizable sea robins and one small fluke. It was a fun outing and a good start to a season of dredging flies for underrated fish. Most will go back to the depths but a few will end up in the pan.

 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. 

The Year the Sand Eels Returned

Sand lances or sand eels, were a staple baitfish in Long Island Sound for many years. By the time I was regularly fishing for striped bass, they were rare enough that it took three years before I encountered bass feeding on them and it wasn't until this year that I actually had to fish imitations of them to deceive fish very specifically keyed on sand eels. This year has been an odd one in Long Island Sound, not like any other year I've fished, and it seemed for a while to be the year the sand eels returned.

One grey morning in late June I stepped onto the sand of one of my favorite flats and looked out over The Sound, unable to see the horizon as the glass calm water blended with the foggy grey sky. When a handful of sand eels spooked out of the bottom of a shallow pool, I knew this would be a good morning. I'd never seen as much as a single one here in the past.

As I walked further still, I saw something else peeking its head out of the sand, a fish of catchable size, and clearly a species I'd never caught. I had a bonefish fly on, and though it wasn't really small enough I had nothing better. I dropped it in front of the fish and it left the sand and ate aggressively. It was much too large to fit in the mystery fish's mouth, but I still managed to hook it and bring it to hand... not that there was much fight on the 10wt.

It would be a little while before I identified this fish. Leo Sheng identified it, actually.

Life List Fish #165, Striped cusk-eel. Ophidion marginatum. Rank: species.

 I hadn't even gotten my ankles wet and I'd seen some sand eels and caught a new species. When I did get out into the water it was quickly apparent that there were large schools of sand eels and that both striped bass and sea robbins were feeding on them. I tied on a simple, slim, Surf Candy style fly and waited to see a wake, pop, boil, or tail.
The first fish I caught was a sea robin. This was no surprise, they are pushovers.

It took me a little while to realize that, though I was only in a foot and a half of water, the stripers were behind me. The were working the bar edges, rooting out sand eels. Though I wanted to look out into deeper water, I was going to need to turn around to catch these bass.

They were very finicky, as most stripers feeding in just inches of water are. I was getting more follows than I was committed takes. In fact I wasn't really getting any takes at all, until I started to let the fly fall and slowed my retrieve. The I managed to pick up a few fish. They were small, but it isn't just about size... it's about the conditions. I don't care what size the fish are, stripers working extremely shallow water, feeding selectively, and demanding a precise presentation is extremely engaging fishing.

After a while the visible bass activity dissipated, so I tied on a Gurgler and attempted to get a topwater sea robin... it didn't take long. Mission success. I left happy.

That was the last time I saw sand eels there so far this year. I kept seeing them in other areas until water temperature climbed too high.
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, and Franky for supporting this blog on Patreon. 

Connecticut Bonito

Before I'd even heard any rumors of bonito in CT this year I was already out hoping I'd get shots at them. I'm not one to follow reports, so I'm sure somewhere somebody had reported in one of the local publications that there were a few around, but I didn't look for that information and didn't even want to see it  if it did exist. I'll chase a really good report, but I'd also rather find my own bite. Often, its just on a whim. In 2017, Noah and I were among the first catch little tunny from shore in CT on September 11th. I saw the conditions line up, we went, and they were there. I hadn't heard a single report yet and nobody else was there targeting them at a quite popular location. Well, on the 4th of August I went to likely water with plans to target other species, but fully prepared for shots at the elusive and beautiful Sarda sarda. Nothing showed, as I expected. There was bait but it wasn't the right tide. I fished for bottom dwelling species, catching some bergals and the first fluke I've brought to hand on the fly in a long while.

A move was made that provided futile, and with very little time left to fish I decided I wanted to go back to the first location. The tide was right, and as if on command, there they were. Nothing locally feeds quite like bones. Superficially, blues or albies could be mistaken for them, but if you have been chasing these fish for a while, there can be no doubt. I was seeing my first definitive bonito blitz in CT waters. I got one shot, a few boils behind my fly, then I had to leave. But you know I was going back the very next day! 

On August 5th, Noah and I got out before I thought the fish would show, always a good policy when tunoids, bass, or bluefish are involved, especially in the days of phone chain bite finding, when a good blitz gets pounced on faster than ever. Before the bonito showed, we sight fished sea robins and drifted for scup and fluke. 

Then, around the top of the tide, I saw some big splashes to my west. I shouted to Noah and we paddled like hell towards the chaos being wrought on a school of silversides. I was the first to get a take, and it was a good one. But I had also just stopped paddling, so the fish and I were both traveling straight towards each other. Lots of slack, no way to really catch up, no hookup. Noah took first blood on a small plug we are inclined to keep a secret for now. Suffice to say, it's going to be a serious game changer for bonito and albies and NOBODY up here is using it right now but him.

Noah's lifer Atlantic bonito.

The fish stayed on a predictable course and I missed another take before hooking up. My first tunoid of the year in the first week of August, and my first bonito in CT! A small chartreuse and white clouser did the job. I managed to keep some amount of tension through the fish's rapid direction changes. These little bonito don't make the long initial run larger member of their species of their cousins the little tunny do, so they end up turning sooner and more and can really make things, uh, exciting for one using a reel with a one to one gear ratio. Keeping tension can be tricky, especially in a kayak and without current. Don't use barbless if you like getting to touch your fish.

We didn't really get another shot that day, though we did bottom fish a bit more. Suffice to say, tunoids were around, we were on them, and I could now think of very little else. It was time to hammer down on the salt.

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.

Summer Saltwater Alternatives

Bluefish are not the staple they had been not long ago in the summer. There are plenty of schoolie bass in the Sound but they can be inconsistent in the warm water. There are big bass on the reefs, that of course isn't an option available to everybody. Bonito have all but vanished in the last six year, maybe more, especially in the western Sound. But there are, indeed, alternatives for summer saltwater fly fishing. One just has to be willing to think outside the box, and be willing to fish for a few of the species that many don't consider worth targeting.

Yesterday Noah and I went hunting for some of these fish. It was cloudy, muggy, and almost dead calm. I wasn't ruling out the potential for big stripers, or bluefish, as the area we were fishing has a tendency to hold them both even when other close-by locales don't. Schoolies and small cocktail blues were virtually assured.

We started out by cruising the very outside edge of a big flat. The fish I was expecting to encounter there is also one of my favorite alternative summer targets: sea robins. Outside of sight casting on the flats, they aren't particularly fun for an experienced angler. But they really don't deserve their reputation, nor to be called ugly.
I think they are adorable. But most who encounter sea robins don't do so on the flats. Having them follow me around like puppies, and take clousers presented literally on my foot very quickly got them a place in my heart.


Yeah, they are easy to fool, but any sight fishing opportunity presented should be taken as it provides some of the most significant insights into fish behavior, and no matter how daft you target is there is no better alternative than practicing dropping a fly the correct distance and angle in front of  a living fish. This evening was odd. I saw numerous sea robins roll at the surface and bust on silversides but on the initial pass of the flat I didn't see even one in the water. I did, however, catch a bass.

The next move was to work a rip where massive amounts of silversides and bay anchovies congregate, as well as typical Northeast species like blues, albies, and bonito. Odd fish show up there too though, and that is our reason for fishing it. Spanish mackerel, jacks, ladyfish, triggerfish... nothing is really a surprise there. Today oddballs were lacking. So were bluefish, but they were around. A handful of bergalls, a scup, and a blue... now I was building a species list. The bergall photographed was from a different outing, but fits the size of the three I got today. When you're hoping for a banded rudderfish photographing a cunner is not a priority. Porgies are virtually everywhere in the Sound, and they are a really good alternative target for fly rodders in the summer. Fishing porgies on the fly often means long light leaders and heavy, heavy flies. I often circumnavigate the system and use either a fly tied on a jig or a drop shot rig. If I can chuck and duck it with a fly rod without risking snapping it, I will use it for porgies and black seabass. Don't get stuck in convention, this method is no less fly fishing than Euro-nymphing methods.

Next, we fished a can and a rockpile. Small fish often congregate on cans, and they can be a hotbed of odd species. Unfortunately the one we visited today was not a producer, but it could be in as little as a week or two.

 So. Back to the flat it was. Sight fishing with clouds and a very low sun is not easy, but fish like sea robins will hold position until you are almost on top of them before they spook so much they won't take a fly or jig, so we still had some advantage. That there was a lot of surface play was also t our advantage, we could see where fish were working from far off. Sea robins don't always give you that option.






Neither do skates. But when one is very brightly colored and lets you roll right up over it's noggin, unless you are paying no attention to the things you should be you are probably going to see it. When I spotted an orange and pink diamond shape with spots plastered on the sand I knew exactly what I was seeing and new I wanted to catch that sucker. I knew staying in the kayak which was drifting quickly down flat as not a good option, so I ditched it. I followed the fish, dropping my clouser in its path, and eventually got it to take. While I hooked the fish and started the fight Noah wrangled my kayak. I then retrieved it and walked both the skate and my kayak up onto the sand bar for a quick photo shoot.

That was the highlight of the day for me. Skates on the fly are not common. This is my second, same species as the first: clearnose skate, Raja eglanteria. 

It was followed by a brief burst of sea robin activity, in which both Noah and myself hooked and landed one, then a lull as darkness fell. My last fish of the day was another bass, Noah's was a near legal fluke. Our species count was exceptional.

Marsh Scup, Channel Flatties, and Flats Edge Birds

Noah and I put in some hours yesterday fishing for a variety of saltwater species with a variety of tactics, him on his new SUP and me in my kayak, which I indeed do stand in when the water is flat enough. Initially we searched for stripers on the flats. They really weren't there in good numbers, unsurprisingly given the time of year, temperatures, and tide timing, but there were some see robins in targetable numbers with a few cruising stripers and tailing tautog in between. Tag teaming sea robins is one of my favorite summer tactics. We found groups and individual robins working the edge of the flat. If I was in a position to present the fly I would right away. If not I pointed them out to Noah and got myself into position. Getting doubles, or even triples if you are fishing with two other people is pretty easy when working groups of marauding robins, is easy with coordinated effort. When one angler hooks up the other robins tend to follow the hooked one, and with precise casts and carefully timed fights and releases it can be possible to hook every one of a group, which could be as much as eight.

We fished a short channel edge behind the flat too, I missed a couple stripers, Noah got one then caught a short fluke on a fluke. To that end he had already gotten sea robin, striper, bluefish, and summer flounder. It was shaping to be a real "who's who" of CT inshore water kind of day. Our next move took us to pleasure boater city, which really annoyed me. Mucked up water, no larger stripers around, and the annoyance of having to keep one eye open for either drunken idiots or just sober stupid idiots became to theme of the day. Living in the heavily populated land that is Southern New England you learn quickly that there are a lot of people around with large, dangerous, fast moving things that should never have been entrusted with large, dangerous, fast moving things. We fished the backwaters, where the boat traffic was still startlingly frequent, and we found marsh porgies. 

It is, I think, quite unlikely that marsh porgies would be a thing were it not for the massive effect that man has had of the shoreline. The two places Noah and I found these scup featured deeper water specifically due to man made structure. In all likelihood these deep holes would never have existed in that kind of marsh water without manmade structure. In this case, bridges. Bridges draw fish like streetlights draw insects in the night. 

I was a little surprised, honestly, that we encountered porgies there. Even when I find them in inshore water it typically isn't that far in. But they were there and for a few hours we caught them on sandworms and some on the fly, and were we more equipped we probably would have had a damned good meal afterwards. Which reminds me...

At one of the launches we used on this day Noah and I found a pile of discarded fish carcasses. Not unusual and not a bad thin in my opinion either as it feeds the ecosystem from which those fish were taken rather than the garbage dump. But in this case, it appeared the only meat that had been taken was from the only keeper sized sea bass there and a short fluke. The short seabass had been filleted and everything discarded and the scup hadn't even been filleted. Anyone who does this kind of thing has a special place in hell waiting for them. If you are going to use the resource you damned well better respect it. CT, as far as I have researched, has no wanton waste laws regarding fish, only migratory birds. That needs to change. 

Noah's last fish of the day was also the second and final fluke of the day, once again in a channel but a much more subtle one.

Though it can be much more difficult to have consistent daylight striper action this time of year there is a lot of action to be had with a fly rod inshore. Sometimes it takes thinking outside the box, sometimes "cheating", but it is all fun and well worthwhile. 

Sight Fishing for Sea Robins

Yesterday Dan and I got out early to fish a favorite flat. We got on a striper bite that may have lasted all of 10 minutes and then struggled to find the fish we wanted. Thank God for sea robins! I sight fished a whole pile of them on the shallow, clean flat. They are fun fish and I'm still amazed how anybody considers them a trash fish. Then again, that goes for any kind of fish.

Last night, I caught my biggest striper, possibly my biggest fish, ever. More on that soon.