Greetings from Capt. Dave & BAYMEN!

On board today, repeat client, Scott Brymer, and friend Jay, for Fly or Die striped bass!

At first light, overcast and fairly calm seas with a light NNE wind and a dead-low tide. As a guide it is always a challenge on where to start our morning on the bay. I have over 60 spots we can fish and in any given morning, I can get my clients to 6-10 spots max. So, today, we ran past several fishy pieces of water and made our first stop at spot #1 – a bar that has held some fish this season on the dead low tide. WHAM! Fish on! In fact, many fish on in this first spot of the morning, including a keeper on the fly!

At one point a MASSIVE fish came through and slammed something on topwater. It was huge! Only one fish, one break, and then it was gone and we never saw it again. That’s fishing and those are the fish that keep me awake at night LOL… Well, we wrapped up at this spot and moved on.

Up bay a mile or so we began to fish spot #2 of the morning. I saw a Parker in the distance that looked familiar. It was sports writer Sean Mulready, who ran my Baymen fishing column in the Patriot Ledger for many years. He was coming to tell me he found a big school of bass and we should join him on the school! We did and we hooked up on a few fish on the fly in Spot #3. The bass were on a VERY selective feed and they kept spooking as I set my drifts. So, rather than risk putting the fish down, I decided it was best for us to move on to some new fish.

We went back to Spot #1 and found some more bass hugging bottom and landed several. Then we ran over to Spot #4 Saquish Head ( you’re welcome :o) and landed another bass, had a few other hits, and saw a bass swim past the boat before moving on.

Onward to spot #5 and we pulled into birds working over a school of bass. It was a very small school and there were cormorants also working some of the bait in the area. We got a few fish, but it was tough fishing. Not a lot of fish and not much holding. But we worked the area hard and moved around and got some fish. At one point, I saw a new school of bass up on a flat. We went right to them and they broke up on arrival in 4 fow. Most likely from the sound of our approaching boat.

Spot #6 of the morning looked like a sure bet working some structure. Nobody home. We ended our last spot of the morning working tight to shore over a shallow flat, where we saw some bass breaking topwater. A couple follows and taps but no hook-ups. We finally called it a great morning on the fly and headed for port.

Total catch and release today was 19 striped bass, 1 keeper, all on the fly. The NNE wind pestered us all morning without let-up but my anglers worked non-stop. Top flies today: Jay’s olive/white clouser, and Capt. Dave’s Chartreuse/Yellow/White Baymen Universal. Both patterns did well and accounted for all 19 fish.

The Fall Run will start in our waters on or around August 25th, give or take a few days. The striped bass will began making their way south back to the Chesapeake, Delaware, and Hudson bays to spend their winter months and to spawn. Fish Fact: Striped bass don’t start their spawning cycle until they are 7 years old when they reach a length of 28″ inches. The largest striped bass ever landed in Massachusetts waters is 73 pounds, and was landed my my late friend, Tony Stetzko, at Nauset Beach on Cape Cod November 3, 1981 – on a black dropper fly Tony tied up at his kitchen table the night before.

Back at it. STAY POSTED:

Capt. David Bitters, BAYMEN, www.baymenlife.com 30 Years Guiding The Bay

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