On board today I had new client, Stephen Coyle and friend, Mike, for fly and light tackle striped bass.

The bay was high tide and flat calm at first light and we began our search for topwater action. We found some fish over the flats, but no schools of fish. The bass inside the bay were chasing individual baits and picking them off when they drove to the surface. A bass here, a bass there, but no bait balls or schools of fish in Duxbury bay.

We moved on to Plymouth and Kingston waters. I was determined to find topwater fish working bait. After a lengthy search, I came to the conclusion there was no topwater inside the bay so we switched over to fishing structure and began to pick off solo fish and small schools of bass hugging the bottom in an average depth of 8 fow.

Stephen and Mike traded off with light tackle and fly and both hooked up on fish with both tackle. We finally found a decent school of fish on the bottom around structure and set many drifts and hooked into a bunch of bass.

We also fished some structure areas that I thought would be stacked with fish but they were nearly void of any activity. So, we really moved around the bay and kept at it until we found a second school of bass that gave up fish, drift after drift on fly and LT.

Total catch and release today was 44 fish, 100% on structure. A couple fish were on topwater that we teased up from the structure. Top tackle was topwater poppers and rubber crank baits for LT. For fly, my BAYMEN Universal pattern was the ticket for today’s bass, fished on an intermediate line.

A side note: I was surprised to not find any bait inside the bay today and no schools of topwater bass. And no birds. And no big fish! It is time, we are in the spring blitz, and bait and big fish should be here, but they are not – yet. Some big fish are being landed north and south of us. A few nice keepers have come out of our local waters, but not many as of June 10th.

In the meantime, lots of small bass to keep us busy and give us great sport on the Fly Rod and Light Tackle gear. Good, solid numbers of fish are in the bay. If not on topwater, we can find them on the structure. We had a great day today and it was fun to figure it all out and find the fish.

Back at it. STAY POSTED:

Capt. David Bitters, BAYMEN, baymenlife.com

*IF YOU FLY FISH, THESE FISH RIGHT NOW ARE A BLAST ON FLY GEAR! GIVE ME A CALL OR E-MAIL AND LET’S GET INTO THEM*