Jacob and Christina started fly fishing in June and have fished in Colorado on the Upper Delaware already. They call Manhattan home and wanted to try some saltwater fly fishing. Sounds like a great plan. They booked a walk and wade trip but were open to something on the boat as well. During the week and post-blow I thought we might be good starting at first light just coming out of slack low before the winds today started to blow.
Plans don't always go as planned.
When we got to the beach the winds were a steady east 20 with gusts above that. The surf was fine but built as the tide flooded and the wind increased. Toss in an east swell and well that's a great day to break into saltwater fly fishing!
We jumped in an fished the beach first watching the fly sweep hard left to right even with a sinking line. Christina is small in stature but big in guts so standing in the surf taking water was fine by her, but she definitely preferred fishing from the rocks. There wasn't much showing until we saw some birds
focused in about 80 feet from us and soon the albies, or maybe bonita were up and out of the water, before quickly moving on. I got reports that the same was found to our south.......no one was 100% sure if the were albies or bonita as no one brought one to hand.
As Christina was stripping in, she did go tight, a gull had dove down and grabbed her Snake Fly from the top of a wave but luckily it flipped of as it took flight near the beach. We were glad of that.
I hope todays trip didn't scare them of from fly fishing the salt, I may have pushed a bit on how great conditions were because this is just my favorite type of water to fish. I believe they will be back, and I promise I will get them out on the boat in October or November in much less sloppy weather.
