46 Fish
Friday, May 22, 2015
On board today I had repeat client, Brian Ware, for fly and light tackle striped bass fishing.
At first light, gentle rain was falling with a slight SW wind. As we cut across the bay, the rains stopped and a few hours later the winds laid down flat, with a very light Easterly.
All of yesterdays epic amounts of bass and bait had left the bay. No topwater for the first two hours today. It was all fish on structure. Near the end of the dropping tide, a few small pods of fish started to chase bait to the top and we found a decent pod in a tight guzzle several miles away from where we were fishing the structure.
Brian mixed it up landing fish on both fly gear and light tackle gear. The lure of choice was once again my Baymen Universal Jig. Bass slammed it and it gets down fast. But we also did fish rubber cranks with a dropper fly above and Brian had two “doubles” on this rig. We also tried topwater poppers to no avail. The fish wanted sub-surface tackle only. For fly patterns, I tied up some huge, weighted Baymen Universal flies that sank quickly and got down deep to the bass.
A few boats out, but the rain and low tide kept most of the bay quiet until later in the am when the sun came out, the rain was over, and the tide was rising. A fresh school of bait and bass started to come in with the tide and we found a big, tight pod on bait that gave us double hook-ups many times.
Total catch and release today was 46 striped bass to 26 inches. All the schooled bass this seson are FAT and looking so healthy. In two more seasons, we are going to be seeing a ton of keepers again in our waters.
Happy Memorial Day weekend and best of luck to everyone heading out!
Capt. Dave, BAYMEN
www.baymenlife.com