Salty Purists...

I didn't even think about bringing my spin gear on this trip. Armed with my fancy new St. Croix 8wt., I've reaffirmed my committment to catching bass and blues on the fly. With my Salty companeros I went back to the scene of my first solo bass success on the fly.

We arrived early at a park on the North Shore. On a swift outgoing tide we flogged the water for hours. Poppers, clousers, deceivers, you name it. We threw everything we had at them. No bass. No blues.

At the swiftest part of the tide we each varied our offerings and our retrieves. While stripping a 2" olive on white clouser low in the water column over the dropoff at the channel's edge, I hooked up with an 'ole family favorite. A fluke, how appropos. A short one at that, but my hands were fishy and that spells modest success on a slow day.

At the bottom of the outgoing a well-armed father-son fishing duo arrived with 9' Lamiglass rods with slick Van Staals, each tipped with a tin. Four casts into his stay the elder came tight with a 22" bass. Most of the boats in the area were looking exlusively for fluke, but most were pulling up sea robins. Our only evidence of present bass was the one fooled by the surf caster's tin.

What were we doing wrong? Were the bass in there all along? What were we doing wrong?

Later we fished some private beach at the back of the bay. It was a weird afternoon, comfortable, but threatening clouds began to build. Again, we beat the super fishy, structure-filled water into submission. Nothing, not even the hole I had previously had success in with a chartreuse on white deceiver. 

All in all it was a positive day. We  learned a lot about the holes, applying Ed Mitchell's wisdom on ingress and egress routes to and from fishy flats. We'll  be back - armed with our fly gear and the resolve to figure it out.