Here’s the situation…

There are dozens if not hundreds of 20-40 pound stripers cruising in less than ten feet of water.  The bottom is a mix of boulders, patches of eel grass, and bright pockets of sand.   Clouds of micro sand eels are the dominant forage.   The sky is bright and clear, your vision perfect.  On the deck of a boat, you stand well armed with every known striper pattern in a variety of colors, and lines that can fish the entire water column.  Casting is fairly tricky due to the wind on your casting arm and the nature of being on a boat restricting where you can make a backcast, but it is manageable.   There are several other boats in the area, engine noise is more or less constant.

A few hours from now, as you rinse off your gear, you will be wondering why you never got a single strike.

Yup this fishing report is all about getting skunked.

Far too often, when an angler gets skunked they take it as a blow to their confidence or pride.  I understand that it can be embarrassing, especially if you are fishing with a friend in your home waters, and the knee-jerk is to rush to find an excuse for the lack of success.  This is why you often hear fishermen excuse failure by citing factors over which they have no control: air pressure, weather, temperature, etc.  Though these play a part, focusing on what you can’t change limits you when thinking about what you could have done differently.  

For a moment lets assume that I caught the 30 pounder which had followed my fly.  Since we are at it, lets assume I caught a fish every cast.  This post could be filled with my grinning face holding up huge fish.  Some readers could see this and think – wow that guy must be a hell of a fishermen, others could see it and think that guy is an ego-driven D’bag.  Either way it is unlikely either group would have learned something truly useful.  Nor would I – if the first fly I cast towards the first fish was readily taken.  May have learned some hook setting skills or fish fighting.  When the fishing is most frustrating is when you have the greatest opportunity to become a better fisherman.

Now this is not to say that I like getting skunked, I don’t.  It happens, and when it happens instead of feeling frustrated or embarrassed, realize that this is an opportunity to learn, to try new things, days when you get skunked are part of the tuition you pay for fly fishing knowledge.

So lets get back to it.

Now this area is a place I had fished many times with good success.  With a few key differences.

Light level

Stripers are nocturnal – they feed during the day and can be caught under a bright sun, but their activity level is highest at night.  I generally fish the early morning hours for a few reasons.  I like that lack of company.  I like that I can fish all summer without getting sunburnt.  I feel I catch a lot more fish then.  The last one is up for debate – it is only natural you will catch more fish during the times when you are in fact fishing.  I also feel that the expression “Beauty is just a light switch away” has something to do with it.  Large gaudy flies likely look better when there is less light to see them, and realistic flies probably look more like the prey they imitate.

Stealth

I fish primarily out of a kayak or by wading.  I feel that a power boat does cost you a measure of stealth, especially when due to wind, current, the boat is drifting quickly.  The classic “down and across” way to work a streamer brings the fly close to the boat very quickly so a manageable 50′ cast nets you 15′ of fishable retrieve or less.  Still with stripers stealth may be over-rated.  The fish casually swim by the boat and the constant noise in the water is likely something they have gotten used to.  Still in my limited personal experience (I’m not sure I’ve fished from a power boat more than a dozen times) the best way to catch a fish is with a very long cast, which due to the wind I was unable to make, and with the current would have been unfeasible because I could not have kept in contact with the fly.  The other aspect of stealth is at 3am I’m generally alone or with another kayaker…3pm on a Saturday the place was mobbed.  Again can’t say for sure if this put the fish off, but at the very least it probably didn’t help.

Location

Another difference was location.  With my plastic yak I can fish right in the boulders – if I hit one I bounce off.  The larger boat had to stay on the perimeter.  Not sure if this mattered much due to the numbers of fish spotted, but it could be a case of the fish holding in one area and feeding in another.

So those are the key differences from the situation I was in and a situation I have fished a number of times successfully.  I should have taken them into account while fishing.  My first attempts were to repeat what had worked in the past, and then I branched from there. 

Observations

The large stripers were at all points in the water column.  Some holding in the current near the surface with their tails exposed, other cruising right along the bottom.

The bait were sand eels, they were very small young of the year about a inch long and thick as a rod tip.  Did not observe any attacks on them, nor were they balled tightly together as they generally do when threatened.

There was some bird activity but not much and certainly not intense.  Occasionally a tern would dive to the surface but there were no fish splashes in the same area.

Tactics used

Attractors

At night I do best in this area with bulky “general baitfish” flies.  Snake flies, modified Tarpon Toads, and large zonker style flies have all produced.  On this day managed several follows but no takes.  Could be that from my position in the boat and due to the current 20-30′ of each retrieve occured fairly close to the boat.  Yet, from past experience big stripers, unlike say pike or trout, move only to take a fly.  This is one of those things I simply don’t know…fishing at night I could have a follow every cast and I’d never know.

Realistic flies

After striking out with a few attractors switched to realistic flies.  In the perfectly clear waters of Cape Cod I find that flies tied very sparsely with translucent materials often will work when more opaque flies will not.  These flies look almost clear, like the bait they imitate.  For all the attention the fish paid them they may as well have been invisible.  No follows no strikes.

Annoying flies

I have come to appreciate flies that imitate what I consider 2nd tier predators.  The sand eels in the area feed not only stripers and birds but squid, small “snapper” blue fish, and a host of other fish big enough to eat them yet small enough to be eaten by stripers.  Of all 2nd tier predators squid are my favorite since they always seem to be in the mix – though they are very hard to see.  A bright orange/rust colored pattern (sounds horrible but thats a common color for excited squid) will sometimes work when nothing else will, and furthermore will often catch larger stripers rather than the quicker smaller ones.  The orange nightmare was followed by a striper with a head the size of my own, but that was it.

Now for the  million dollar question…were these fish catchable.  There probably are situations were fish simply are not feeding, this may have been one of them.  Or, was there some pattern, retrieve, or trigger that would have gotten them to feed had I just found it.  Honestly I have no real way of knowing, but I choose to believe that these fish were catchable and that they were in some feeding pattern that I have simply yet to decode.  It is also possible that there was something we were doing to pervent them from feeding, they may not have spooked and bolted like other fish, but they could have been waiting for us to leave.  Perhaps they were waiting for a natural trigger, a different stage of the tide or for the sun’s angle to change.

I will consider all the variables I can over the next few days, maybe I’ll learn something useful, maybe I wont.  But if I shrug my shoulders and chalk the skunking up to “They weren’t biting” or more pathetically “Bad Luck,” then I wont learn a thing.

And when it happens again, which it will, I’ll have something new to try.