Well. Whatever. Since I had a warm and fuzzy feeling about fishing and Hurricane Lee off the Eastern Seaboard I got the go ahead from Theresa. I knew the surf had been building since I was out two days ago and fishing it at night wasn't going to happen. The only good thing about the moon phase, tide and time of day is that dead low is after 3 am, so there's less water to knock you around.
Lee was 425 miles from Pt. Pleasant where I had decided to give it a shot. I know there's lots of bait around and certain rivers hold fish all summer long and they start to chew when the bait moves. Before I headed east I broke out my new fly line. Yep, I cheated on Orvis, and well, Scientific Anglers, whom Orvis bought in 2013. I hope, and not like me, that you've always thought Orvis poured their own fly lines up in Manchester, Vermont. No, I think Orvis "designs" their own lines and SA producers them for them. If you read descriptions of the lines from each there is definitely some blurring going on. What is amazing to me is the price that fly lines are fetching these days. Check out the line from SA below.
That's $129 bucks. That's a fly line you don't want to step on with your wader studs and run along the rocks on your favorite groin. What I did go with was Cortland's "Striped Bass Blitz" for my 10 wt. I had
my lovely assistant help me stretch it out before I took some time to make sure I was all buttoned up and ready for a long night of fishing. My thinking was to hit the back because that's where the bait is, the fish might just like to hang tight and eat before heading out front for the morning meal, and I wasn't
going to play with the building surf. I had the joint to myself and found the bait in good amounts. It is no doubt the start of the fall migration of bait, and I think bass, well the early September bass. It was an interesting night. Storm out front with a new moon tide with water in the back that just didn't want to
drain. Yes it moved, but slowly like it was holding on and dragging it's nails across the chalkboard. At times it almost felt like the tide was on the flood because the surge would come in and waves would crash along the rocks and bulkheads.
It was a bluefish fest with 3-5 pound blues destroying bait and flies as well. Near the light I did see a few nice sized bass below the fray that would come up and refuse my offerings. It was four hours of mostly watching and waiting or jumping from spot to spot to see if the tide had any bass lined up in
feeding lanes. That just didn't happen.
The boys have been on the beach and Leif sent me this pic yesterday of a keeper sized bass that hit, a Snake Fly?, of course not, just a beat up old UAF (Ugly Ass Fly). The new line was great. It was supple, loaded well, almost like a RIO Outbound, but not, and had a new fly line slickness to it.
Going forward into this week Hurricane Lee will be moving north and east. The tides will be bottomed out at sunup and sundown which may be okay if you can find beaches that have some
structure, or have new structure from this blow. Hopefully the mullet will still be here, which I think it will as it wasn't a super storm. I just hope the bass stick around to feed on them.