Nice day all around. Boat back up and purring like a kitten. Super nice client in John who's just starting out fly fishing in the salt. A few targets and fish to hand. But, a tough slow days fishing.
John and I were out front just at first light. We had our pick of the place as the boats were behind us. Lots of anglers along the beach but all morning I didn't see anyone hook up, but I did hear a girls screams, in a happy way, halfway through the trip. We stopped on some birds but didn't mark fish or see any for that matter, then the boats came through, literally. We went out, we went down, we went in, we put a lot of miles on the engine but the fish were elusive.
John caught this nice bluefish that ate a sand eel fly. Funny thing was Johnny was casting and retrieving this fly on a 300 grain sinking line. He made a cast, discovered a know in the line, fiddled with it for a minute or so, and when he started retrieving he was tight. We headed back to out first
stop and had better bird action and fish occasionally rolling and busting on top. It was blow up, cast to the blow up. It didn't pay to run and gun as most of the rises were one and dones. We did catch a nice striped bass. We decided to switch up our offerings and rods and as John reeled his in, my was dangling over the side, and a bass came up and ate the fly. I hate when the guide catches a fish.
We hung in waiting for "it" to go off, but it never did and as the morning came and went the pea soup fog rolled in. We took a slow ride back looking for marks and tried to nymph one up to no avail. The Coast Guard was busy today as we heard one boat that was taking on water, to the point where they were going to get into a life raft, and another boat that was in distress in the fog without electronics. Hope everyone made it home safe.
