When I woke up at 5 am things were looking good, at least on the side of the island where I am staying. No wind and a bright sun coming over the horizon. I grabbed a coffee, packed a lunch, and
headed west. As I drove on North Road I saw the gas pump in the front of someone's property. I can't read the PPG but out here it's $4.59. Drive a 2500 pick up and you can only imagine how far that goes.
The nice thing about not taking the boat out is packing light....well really not so much. A cooler, the ladder, rod, stripping basket, and sling pack, you'd think I was going on a pack and hike trip. I set up
camp where I anticipated on crushing them on the flood tide. It was about 90 minutes in, and, there was a gentle NNW breeze. This could be a perfect day. I hoped to come back and find bass cruising the sod
banks looking for a meal. Even though the sun was low, so was the water, and it looked like a bowl in the pond. I hoped to find some early birds on the move but ventured out where the water rushed in. I
found a nice spot with some cover, which was the full of an old abandoned boat, which had clean sandy beaches on each side. It didn't take long for me to see my first customer, in fact over the six hours I saw 40 or so fish. I must have changed my flies 100 times
because every single fly I threw at them got refused, except for one fish that I set up on and ate a Flexo Crab. I offered them crabs, sand eels, Clousers, Schoolie Flies, Mushmouths, Bunny Flies...you name it I gave them a shot at them. I would say I'm a decent sight angler so I can't figure out what's up. I didn't
line any of them, which is kind of hard to do with 15' of clear fly line at the tip, and didn't botch any casts. The ONLY thing I can think of is my leader and tippet is 9 feet long and made of 20 pound flouro down to 16. Tomorrow I am going down to 12 pound. Maybe that'll be the difference.
I went back inside to check how my tide was coming along and to hit the cooler for lunch. The water was a little ripply but the high sun made up for that. So I went back and found a threesome of bass just where
I needed them to be. Look, you can only catch what's in front of you and is willing to eat, so I'll take the above 15 pound fish any day. I wanted to get set up so back inside I went and things were looking better.
But by the time I got the ladder and walked the flat and set up, like 10 minutes, everything went to shit. That WSW wind kicked in and that was it. The sun couldn't overcome the top of the flood tide
with the wind. I did see two from the ladder but they were close and gone before I could react. I called it a day, there, but did stop on some spots on the way back home.
I did stop and walk for awhile but never made a cast as by now it was 3 pm and the sun wasn't right. I did see clouds of sand eels which the bass blow up on from time to time. I was planning on doing a third shift
outing tonight but I'm beat up and a little discouraged. Tomorrow I will be fishing around some larger bait, and hopefully larger fish, so it was "Guinness and a Fly" this afternoon. I hear there's some mackerel around so I dug through the
little fly tying materials I brought and did my best. I'll have to stop and pick up some eyes tomorrow because mackerel and herring flies just need eyes in my opinion. I know they're more for me than the fish but they just don't look right without them.
