Mike is a newer saltwater fly fisherman and wanted to get out and look for stripers before the summer. His goal wasn't to just catch a fish but more to learn about stripers, beach and structure, and tides, wind and moon. Well I did a lot of talking and he a lot of casting. Started out just at 5 am casting a popper/dropper up and and down the beach with a little more than hour before dead low. Zero wind. Zero swells. W to NW wind. Near blowout tide. Took a long time to get water to fill back in.
Conditions were near perfect for sight fishing but we did see any fish swimming around except for one striper that followed Mikes crab fly out of the trough. We did manage to find one lone fluke that was fooled enough to eat. I was hoping that the fluke may show up a few hours into the flood tide but that didn't happen. Even a chartreuse over white Clouser got no love.
Its hard to teach stripers and big water and bait and chaos and big NE slop and having a client get juiced about it when you have conditions like we had below.......boring. Not Mike, but the water.
Some of the best water we found was late into the game just before quitting time. I was confident something would be home and it would be a good way to finish up the day. But, well, nope. He is looking to do this again in the fall and I would like him to see the water with the mullet or tiny white bait around.
