On board today, I had client and good friend, Richard “The Machine” Comstock who threw a fly today for six hours non-stop. The bay was near calm with shifting light wind, and fish were inside holding on structure and occasionally on topwater.

We set drifts on topwater fish that were very skittish. A handful of birds were working the schools we fished. We landed a couple fish under birds but had the best success fishing structure to fish on the bottom. We had great success with topwater poppers for the first half of the morning. The fish readily came up and hit a large chartreuse popper and a smaller orange/red popper. The anticipation and explosive hits are a total rush! That’s the big draw to fishing with poppers on flat water over structure.

The second half of our morning we fished an “Oregon Clouser” that I tied up at the kitchen table last night, that closely matched a Greg O’Brien tied pattern. (see Baymen Report May 23, 2019). The “Oregon Clouser” has purple flash and red thread wraps and those two ingredients make this pattern unique. Stripers slam them! We fished these clousers on sinking lines and long drifts over mini rips, dips, sand bars and cuts. If bass were there, they would take this fly. We also fished my Baymen Universal pattern for a short time and landed several more fish.

Time passed quickly today. When I looked at my watch for the first time, I could not believe we had been on the bay for six hours and into fish for most of the morning. In fact, we only fished one section of the bay all morning today because we were into fish.

Total catch and release today was 18 striped bass on poppers, clousers and Baymen Universals. We fished floating, intermediate and sinking lines on flurocarbon leaders. It was a great morning, a lot of fun, and addictive fly fishing the poppers. I plan to fish a lot more fly poppers when the waters are calm and there is no wind. It is just so exciting!

Back at it. STAY POSTED: Happy Memorial Day from BAYMEN Land.

Capt. David Bitters, BAYMEN, www.baymenlife.com

*IF YOU FLY, I WANT TO GUIDE YOU TO FISH – Call or e-mail. I have dates available.

POST SCRIPT: I went to the Bluefish River this evening to throw a fly and wind down the day. One hit. So, I packed my TFO Clouser Rod in the Jeep and did what any sensible angler would do after a long day of work and getting by on four hours of sleep a night: I went to Town Pier. I put my Clouser rod together and tied on a clouser fly and fly fished the shoreline. It was loaded with bait and small stripers! And as a bonus, the Yacht Club was throwing a wild party with a live band so I got to fly fish the night away to great music. A very tiny portion of me wished I was in sport coat and tie, enjoying fine food and drink while dancing the night away with beautiful girls. But like Steven Wright said, “you can’t have everything – where would you put it?” – Capt. Dave, BAYMEN