When I met Joe I said I had three goals for the trip. One, to catch a fish on the "Average Pencil". Two, catch a fish on the "Snake Changer", and three, just catch a fish. All in that order. Well first the pencil fly. It worked okay. Shortly after throwing it the tungsten patch in the rear came unglued and was gone. The fly, if you can call it that, still tracked in a straight line and only really make a disturbance
when not that much line was out, like less than 25 feet. But for the fish liking it? They must have because I kept count of the 23 blow-ups I had on it. One fish I hooked but it became unbuttoned. Time to go back to the drawing board. Then I realized I forgot my "Snake Changers" after taking them out of the wallet for a tune-up at the vice. So it was off to goal number three.
A year almost to the day, May 23rd in fact of 2023, I had my best day (above) ever on the river. Today marked the best boat day ever. We put in at the same place as yesterday and headed north. We found the bait and found the bass who were blitzing at times at schools of herring coming down the river. It was like being at a four way stop and just being at the perfect spot at the bait-bass intersection.
While I'm the kinda of guy who only wants to dry fly fish, and can't get into nymphing, today I wanted to get them on my new creation. So when the fishing got good, and knowing I would catch a ton more underneath, I stayed throwing up top for two hours. When I couldn't take it anymore I went underneath and started catching even though the bite had died off.
The biggest fish of the day was a brute. It was Joe who brought it to the boat and it nearly got stuck in the tank. 33 inches long, and 23 inches in girth. That puts that fish just over 20 pounds when doing
the length and girth calculation. The other bass were hard chargers and their feeding time was definitely on. They say that striped bass have a feed time, a digest time, and then even a rest time in between eats.
While yes they are opportunistic feeders, and won't pass up a quick snack, when they feed, or in some counts today, overfeed, their belly's are grossly distended and full of herring. It's really something to see. And then for whatever reason, maybe that digest period kicks in, and the bite dies, even if there is still bait around. I have seen that it takes 18 hours to digest a full stomach, so there you may have one good all out feed daily. Tomorrow is the full moon and I wonder if that came into play as well.
