On board today, I had repeat client, Brian Ware, for fly fishing striped bass. Brian has been fly fishing with me for many seasons and today was a lovely, flat-calm morning to fly…

At first light, a dropping tide and not a breath of wind. Overcast, low pressure system over the bay, with some rain showers and fog in the distance. Water temps at the dock: 71 Degrees! Bath water in Baymen Land.

We headed for the first spot of the morning and began to hook up right away as we set up our drifts. Fish were not stacked, but they were schooled up in decent numbers. I think we had four fish boated before we moved on.

Next spot: Saquish Rip. We only picked up one small bass in the rip and that was it. I was surprised, but bass are where you find them, not where you want them to be. We ran back to spot #1 and picked up another bass. Then we fished a sandbar drop-off in Plymouth with no hits.

Deeper into Plymouth and we found some fish at slack tide. Brian threw an ORVIS floating line and Red/White popper and had some exciting hits on our drifts. We picked up a few more fish and had many more chase-downs and tail slaps. As the tide began to turn and come back into the bay, we moved to another deeper channel and fished the edges of the eel grass beds. Several fish were moving into the bay with the tide. At one point, a BIG couple of bass finned and slammed bait on topwater just out of our range. We quickly circled and set up a drift but never saw those couple of big fish again. They easily went 36″ inches but showed themselves for only a brief moment. We tried to find them on sonar but only marked bait and small fish.

We left Plymouth waters and moved up into Duxbury. We fished several of my regular spots and some spots that I have not fished this year. We did find fish stacked up in one channel. They were very small fish, maybe 2 years old. Great fun on the fly but we both wanted to find bigger fish! We then fished all around Clark’s Island area and found a handful of very small fish.

5+ hours was almost up and we decided to hit up two other spots that I have not fished this year. One hit in each spot, about a mile apart. The sun came out, air temps were scorching HOT and the water temps were 70 degrees. We were happy to have caught and released a total of 26 striped bass today on the fly.

NOTES: No seals anywhere today inside the bay. Bait is getting thick at the docks and in the bay. Top patterns today were Baymen Universals and Holy Baymens. For topwater, we had the best success with Re/White poppers. We tried a Blue/White but it did not get as many hits. We also toyed with the idea (as I have in years past) of coming up with a “plankton” fly to try and hook up on pogies. I need to really take a hard look at this and come up with a fly or find an existing one. Pogies fight very hard when snagged and would be an absolute blast as a catch and release sport fish on 5,6,7 weight fly rods…! STAY TUNED:

That’s the word for today. Temps Sat/Sun will be in the… 100’s!!! Stay cool.

Capt. David Bitters, BAYMEN, baymenlife.com

*I have a handful of open dates for Aug/Sept. E-mail me and let’s get on the fish! baymencharters@gmail.com baymenlife.com Also booking 2020 and 2021 spring and fall blitz dates!