6/30/08

Summer is truly here bringing hot weather and pop-up thunder storms every other day, which can render the fish a little confused, and anglers as well.  Fish that were near or under bunker schools a week ago were taking flies, and if you had some moving water you had a good chance at a Bass.  Blues were slashing sand eels everywhere and top-water action was reliable near ubiquitous sand eels.  But this past week required considerably more hunting to find the eager fish.

A sand eel meal is still the deal however.  We took several nice bass like this one off of Fairfield beach between red 22 and Penfield Reef the other day.  They were feeding on sand eels concentrated near shore, but still in 6 – 10 feet of water.  Once we got near the bait we had good action for well over an hour.  We would drift above the bait, shut down the motor and drift through with fast sinking lines.

Blues will of course compete for such bounty and we could see them along side of Stripers that came to the boat.  We even saw a very large Striper try to muscle a large weighted deceiver away from a mid-sizer with 6 inches of feathers hanging from the corner of her mouth.  These fish were rotund from gorging, and the strikes were jarring.

Blues were slurping off the surface when they weren’t chasing the bass with your fly, and would take a top-water bug or plug.  They were hot when hooked and pulled hard to get away from the boat.  They practically put themselves on the reel when given a little line, and took several good runs before biting the Boga.