On the 6-hour drive home to Syracuse, following our last week of fly fishing for Striped Bass, John and I (the Dino Boys) had a lively discussion about this Bass season.  This was not the first nor will it be the last discussion we participated in concerning our growing knowledge of Striped Bass fishing.  John, who has fly fished almost exclusively for the last 10 years, brings his childhood experiences of bait and plug fishing on Long Island to the discussion, while I bring 45 years of fly fishing experience fishing for fresh and salt water species with me.  Even with the diversity of our previous experiences, we have noted more and more common ground being established.

This year started out with such high expectations.  We began the year with a weeklong pilgrimage in early June, timed to match the early run of big fresh fish.  We established ourselves in Wellfleet, fairly centrally located between Chatham light, Race Point, the Back Beaches and the Bay side.  This allows us to hunt fish to our hearts content, while allowing our wives to shop, site see, and walk as much of the beaches that they feel they wish to see, without our grumpy personalities to deal with.

The spring jaunt was tough this year.  Winter was colder and longer than normal, and the waters of the North Atlantic did not warm as soon as expected.  This seemed to delay the normal migration of fish.  The bait did not flood the area, and as a consequence, the larger bass did not establish themselves as early as we had hoped.  We did catch a number of schoolies, but only 2 or 3 "keeper" sized fish.  We noted that evening fishing was better than daytime fishing, and the bay side was better than the backside. The backside beaches produced enough fish for us to keep at it, but we never seemed to be in the right place at the right time to find a beach at low tide.  So, we did not see enough beach structure to find where fish held. We simply followed too many rumors, and did not trust our own ability to find fish.

We decided that we had learned many things on this spring trip.  First and foremost, trust your observation of the water.  Rumors of fish are all over the Cape, but they are usually several days old.  So, you follow a rumor by packing up and trying a beach that had fish two days ago, but you give up on a beach that might have active fish now.  We decided that what we should have done is spend more time at one beach, or at least spend enough time to find most of the structure, and learn to fish that structure.  There were probably more than enough fish for us anywhere; we just had to learn one place at a time.

Second, practice your casting.  Sure, I can cast 80 to 100 ft with an 8 wgt or 10 wgt. but several of our group could not.  One had a difficult time casting 30 feet with his new saltwater rod.  Well did it surprise anyone that I caught more than the others?  No, not really.  Being able to cast 100 feet under ideal conditions really means that with the wind up, and waves building, I can still cast 30 to 45 feet, or enough to reach some fish even in poor conditions. If you can only cast 30 feet in ideal conditions, with a wind in your face, and surf breaking on the beach, you will find it very hard to clear the top of the breaking waves, and, as a consequence, will not reach many feeding fish.  Practice, practice, practice, and not on the  lawn. Go to a lake, or the surf, and cast into the wind and waves if you can. Learn to feel the rod "loading", so you can fish at night.  Don't be afraid of turning your head and watching your line uncurl behind you.  You need all the input you can learn to feel, if you are to cast efficiently under less than ideal conditions.  Last and most importantly, learn to double haul.  It is probably the most efficient way to load a rod and increase line speed. All these efforts are aimed at improving your casting, not embarrassing you, so do not hesitate to seek help from more competent casters.

Equipment was also evaluated during the spring trip. We agreed that contrary to most advertisements, the most expensive equipment did not produce any better than the more modestly priced.  I do think you tend to get what you pay for, but there are real bargains out there.  A $795.00 rod is not necessary to cast to a striper, nor is a $500.00 reel needed. Certainly if you can afford these, and you want them, and your wife doesn't find out, then by all means, you need them.  We did decide that certain things were necessary.  A reel capable of holding 150 or more yards of 30 lb backing is essential.  Certainly most stripers will not take 150 yards of backing, but the less you have on the reel spool, the more turns of the reel are needed to pick up line verses a large enough reel, fully loaded with a maximum amount of backing, or a large arbor reel. We all pray that we will hook a fish that takes 100 or more yards of backing, and when that one large fish heads for Portugal, it is just a little too late to think about having more than enough backing on board.

Leader strength was also discussed at great length.  One in our group  hooked a good fish, only to break off on the initial surge and headshake. It was at that point that he noticed he had knotted a 1/0 sand eel fly to 6 lb. tippet material.   6 lb strength leader has no place in the surf, and only examining your setup can keep you from making these mistakes.  These fish are just not that leader shy.  The surf is a different environment than a flat, so fish a strong enough leader to fight the fish with authority. You might need to go to 6-10 lb leader on a flat, but conditions are what determine leader strength, not guesses or worse, mistakes.  You might fish all week for 1 good fish, why loose it due to a simple oversight.

Our fall fishing extravaganza almost did not happen.  The economy bit our group very badly.  One of our members lost his job in the spring, and had to change methods of employment.  This change caused him to miss the last trip of the year.  Our Japanese "cook"/friend found his job took up all his free time.  He does drug research, and his timing could not have been worse.  He had a new drug under investigation by the FDA, and he was totally involved in an Investigative New Drug Form for the feds.  At least that is what he tells us.  His son started Michigan State the week preceding our trip, and his wife may just have had something to say about his time away from home. John also took the axe at work.  He did show his dedication to his fishing career by fishing all day, but continuing to search for a job between beach visits.  I on the other hand am the director of my life (at least my wife lets me think so), so I just scheduled myself out of the office.

Somewhere near Worchester, we complimented ourselves on remembering a lesson that we seem to relearn every trip.  Learn the beach at low tide.  Well, we did that this September.  We showed up at a Back Side beach in Truro on the second day of our trip.  We timed low tide so we could see and understand the structure of the beach.  Boy, were we glad we did.  The beach was totally different than it was in the spring. We returned just 3 hours before sundown to fish the next 3-4 hours, and learned something else.  Hurricanes can ruin your fishing plans even when they are hundreds of miles to the east.  10 to 12 ft. waves are not what you wish to fish at night.  We decided not to fish the Back Side when we saw the surf, as we did not want to get sucked off the beach only to be live bait for Tony's sharks.

John and I discussed our options and decided to move to the bay side while the hurricane was pounding the backside beaches.  It became obvious that we learned something else at that time.

We arrived at the Race Point Ranger Station at high incoming tide.  It was the wrong time to see structure, so we headed for a beach out of the wind and high surf, looking for fishable water.  Once we were out of the high surf, we started to see areas we wished to fish.  Oddly enough, we both agreed to fish the same area at the same time.  We both noticed Cormorants fishing within casting distance of the beach.  We logically decided that if there was enough bait to keep the cormorants busy, there was probability enough bait to interest the stripers.  We seemed to be the only fishermen interested in the birds, as a number of vehicles drove by, with the  occupants looking intently at the area we were fishing.  No fish showed, so I guess the fishermen were not interested in staying with us, but driving and looking for busting bass elsewhere.

We were correct in our decisions to fish with the birds, as we must have landed between 30 and 40 schoolies that evening.   This led to the next bit of information that we had always known, but now recognized as a fact.

Appropriate sized fly rods make schoolies a great fish to catch.  We were not using 20 lb line-class surf rods, but 8 wgt fly rods with intermediate lines, or sink tip lines.  These were perfect for our 3-4" sand eel flies, and the schoolies feeding on them.  We managed to use our own minds to find the fish, and light fly rods balanced against the size of the dominant fish to have a great afternoon.  The vast majority of the fish we hooked and fought that afternoon were between 26" and 28".  We did manage to take the occasional 32" to 36" fish however.  These were very exciting to hook on lighter rods.  We had to actually think about how to fight fish to land these larger sized bass.

As we drove along, we discussed how we fought those fish.  We had to lean into the fish with the rod butt, not the tip.  Using the strength of the rod to battle the fish.  Drags had to be adjusted correctly, or a free spool might have resulted.  Palming a reel takes on a whole new meaning when a larger fish gets into the current and wishes to be somewhere else.  John likes to have a light drag, and feel the fish run.  He feels more in control with his palm on the reel than a mechanical drag.  I have a different approach.  I like to have a fish work to take drag.  I still palm the reel during a run, but I tend to make the fish pay for every inch he takes.  I like to slug it out with the fish a little more than John does.

The next day, we arrived at the beach early in the day.  The sun was high and bright, and the tide was in the bottom of the outgoing.  We wanted to see the rips develop so we could decide where we should fish for the rest of the day.  This brought us to several other commonly misunderstood facts about fly-fishing.

First; under the right conditions, the fly rod is a superior fishing instrument, and second; flats fishing in the North East is every bit as exciting as bone fishing in the Caribbean.

When the Dino boys arrived at the beach, it was what usually is said to be the worst time to fish for stripers.  The sun was high, the tide was almost out, and the current was almost gone.  What we noticed was a large number of stripers in the 24-32 inch range cruising the flat we were walking to. These fish were swimming into what current still existed, and not more than 1-2 feet off the beach.  What a great setup for a fly rod.  John and I made our first casts standing 20-30 ft. from the water.  We dropped small 2" size 1 sand eel flies, just inches into the water, and we were both rewarded with instant hookups.  We fought school size stripers for 3-4 hours from the same spot we started from, probably not moving 15 feet in any direction.   We also noticed the fish cruising the deeper parts of the flat were significantly larger than the schoolies we were playing with.  Both of us managed to hook several of the larger fish.  We decided that we really enjoyed breaking all the rules of striper  fishing.

I have fished for bonefish, ‘cuda, shark, permit, and tarpon on the flats of Crooked Island for the last several years.  That is exceptional fishing. You sight fish in 1-3 ft. of crystal clear water for every thing you wish to catch. It is exciting, but it holds nothing over the "flats " fishing we enjoyed that day.  John and I had "broken" almost all the "rules " of striper fishing, and were rewarded with well over 50 fish taken with a 2-3 inch fly on 8 wgt. fly rods.  The absolute topper was the number of fishermen that drove by us, binoculars to the eyes, and didn't even stop to notice what we were doing.  John and I felt certain that all these people "knew" we could not be catching bass, as we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Little did they know that we had hooked and released more "legal" 28 inch and larger fish that afternoon, than many of them saw all week.

Several hours into our trip home, it came to us that our last bit of our education came on the last day, while we were fishing with Jeff.  It would be nice to tell you that we learned this bit of information from his capable hands, but that is not the case.

We arrived at the beach at 5:15 am, and begun to catch fish almost immediately.  The Dino boys watched Jeff wade out to a bar, and catch fish with some regularity.  Jeff was 100 ft. from the shore, fishing with a 10-wgt rod and a lead core shooting head. He was probably hooking fish that were not hunting anywhere within our casting range.  Jeff took several fish in the 30+" range.  John and I each took legal fish from the shore.  This went on for 2-3 hours after sunup.

As the bait fishermen began to notice our luck with flies, and their lack of action with chunk bait and sand eels, something started to change.  Several "bait" fishermen went back to their vehicles and returned to the water with fly rods.  One fisherman did not know how to mount his reel, but all of these fishermen wished to fly fish at that point in time.  So, the fact that "bait" fishermen can also be fly fishermen allows us to fish with "bait" fishermen on a more equal basis.  We have a knowledge and skill that many of them wish to gain.  I think this opens a whole new avenue of discussion with other fishermen. We no longer have to feel isolated, and misunderstood.  We need to reach out and offer our help and flies to those fishermen that appear to want our help, so they can enjoy the same fishing experience that we enjoy.  Hopefully this will help us as well, by joining forces with more and more fishermen to help protect of our way of fishing, and the resource we all share.