16 Fish – My Morning in Pictures – Baymen Guide Service, Inc. & Baymen Charters

On board today, Mr. Dick Bowman for fly fishing striped bass.

At first light, thick, dense fog covered the bay and it stayed that way for the first few hours of our charter. Tide was high dropping with +2.2 low and winds were clam. Water temps about 67 degrees, with a wisp of south wind.

Other than slow going in dense fog, the big surprise was a lack of birds, bait and bass inside the bay. It was very quiet. We covered a lot of my areas looking for topwater fish. We found a handful of bass chasing peanut bunker. The fish were fast moving, on the prowl for food and there was very little for them to find. No bait almost always means no bass or very few.

We set drifts trying to get into the fast-moving bass with little success. We were fishing topwater poppers and most of the fish were not interested. So, we fired up the engine and headed for new water. We found more of the same in other areas.

We decided to make a run to check a spot outside that has been holding some decent bass. To our surprise, that spot was void of fish! So, back inside the bay, we found a few fish moving over the flats and weed beds on the dropping tide. We switched over to Baymen Universals and also a peanut bunker pattern and began to land some fish.

Next up we returned to one of the first spots we visited earlier in the morning and it was loaded with fish exiting the bay. Some fish were topwater and some were down 20-30 seconds. We fished intermediate and sinking lines and did very well. Total catch and release for the morning was 16 striped bass on the fly. The fog finally lifted and we could actually see fish breaking, making it much easier to set our drifts. It was an odd, strange, lovely and fun morning fishing in dense fog in the fall run.