The ocean is a big place. Spin a globe fast enough and you will only see one color, blue. People do poorly though with scale. Probably the easiest example of this is in the climate change debate. As is always the case, your personal opinion doesn’t matter; just consider what you have heard. The problems are presented as: automobiles, power plants, cow farts, stuff like that. Solutions are presented in the form of wind farms, solar power, eating soy, that sort of stuff. But quick what is the single biggest component of the Earth’s climate…

Ocean Currents

If you answered the sun good enough – the sun’s affect on our oceans and atmosphere is important, but would you call that the sun directly or just the affect? Probably a chicken vs the egg type question.

Actually the question which came first the chicken or the egg is laughably easy. The answer is clearly the egg. Two non-chickens could mate and via mutations and selective breeding create an egg that would result in a chicken. The more interesting question would be at which point to you define “chickeness.” The point where you have two very similar-to-chickens birds but one is a chicken and one is not. Where is Colonel Sanders when you need him? That’s right he’s dead.

Wait a sec I had a point about the oceans. When was the last time you read or heard ocean currents mentioned in the debate for either side? Hard to take anyone seriously when they focus on minutia – what happens on only a small fraction of all the lands of the world is meaningless compared to what happens in the oceans. Spin the globe, it becomes one color and no person or government controls it or fully understands it. This should make us happy, the reality that humans miss the obvious so thoroughly and so often, less happy.

So now let’s consider flats fishing.

All intellectually active fishing is structure based. Luck plays a role of course but best left for the morons. If you find blitzing fish on a flat, make no mistake…you got lucky. So what is the key structure of a flat…I mean the term “flat” whether it applies to an expanse of sand, a woman, Nebraska implies the scenery is pretty uninspiring. Sad really. As their name implies flats are mostly flat, and some of them are measured in square miles.

The most common answer given are the channels and drop offs worn through the sand. This is true to a point, and these areas can be extremely important. Again it comes down to scale. A 6 inch drop-off, heck a 4 foot deep hole is as nothing compared to the three major structural elements of the flat.

These are:

Bait

Current

Wind

And SPOILER ALERT: the latter two primarily matter in how they affect or alter the way stripers relate to the first.

Finding fish is the single greatest challenge of fly fishing on a flat. The specific reason should be obvious. Bait, current, and wind are all dynamic values. They change day to day, hour to hour. They also affect each other in ways I am not going to pretend to fully understand. When the wind stacks against the current, the very tide can be altered. Bait fish seem to be blown (although I believe it is more likely their microscopic food sources that are directly moved) by the wind. I have always found the best days are when the wind is moving perpendicular to the tide…so a South wind (Wind in your face when you face south) with a current sweeping East (the water flows east.) Winds are listed by the direction they come from, currents by the direction they flow towards. The boulder in a trout stream is forever a boulder in the trout stream…nothing on a sandy flat is lasting. You simply can’t get intellectually lazy and remain a successful fly fisherman…at least not in this environment.

Conan: “What gods do you pray to?”

Subotai: “I pray to the four winds… and you?”

Conan: “To Crom… but I seldom pray to him, he doesn’t listen.”

Subotai: “What good is he then? Ah, it’s just as I’ve always said.”

Conan: “He is strong! If I die, I have to go before him, and he will ask me, ‘What is the riddle of steel?’ If I don’t know it, he will cast me out of Valhalla and laugh at me. That’s Crom, strong on his mountain!”

Subotai: “Ah, my god is greater.”

Conan: “Crom laughs at your four winds. He laughs from his mountain.”

Subotai: “My god is stronger. He is the everlasting sky! Your god lives underneath him.”

Obviously, Subotai fished the flats and Conan fished mountain streams. You don’t have to worship the four winds, but you ought to pay attention to them. Specifically how the prevailing wind has interacted with the current. The current is the more constant of the two…it only changes every six hours and fairly predictably…and with the moon…and the overall shape of the area you are fishing. Simple. The wind…well most clichés for change involve some mention of the wind, there is a reason for that.

Stripers come on to a flat for one reason and one reason only, to feed. On the flat the fish are vulnerable, likely uncomfortable, at least out of their preferred temperature and habitat ranges. They have a short window of time when the water and hunting conditions offer them an advantage.

Bait should be loosely defined not so much as what a striper can eat (which is anything that can fit it its mouth) but what the stripers are actively feeding on. Very often a school of stripers can be seen cruising over a flat while a school of sandeels, bunker, or herring are just milling about. It took me a long time to accept that the stripers just aren’t feeding on the obvious bait at that time, and are most likely feeding on shrimp, small crabs, something of that nature. The oceans, especially the flats host an amazing amount and diversity of life. It’s just not always easy to see. We all dream of black tides of peanut bunker and bass busting through them…but more often we get the hint of a tail here a swirl there. If you know the bait (that they are eating at this moment) – match it. If you can’t tell, very often the best fly is a “critter” fished near the bottom.

Then seemingly a moment later, the stripers attack the baitfish en masse. What happened?

The answer: Something Changed.

The current may have picked up either due to the wind, tide, relative depth or combination of all these factors so the balance of power tipped in their favor. Stripers, all gamefish really, respond to changes in their environment that are not always readily apparent to us. We don’t have to understand, just be paying attention and adjust accordingly.

“You can’t control the wind but you can adjust your sails.”

Attributed to numerous scholars, most likely stolen from Trogdor the Unwashed of the River People.

In some ways I feel that this article is the one that holds wisdom that will help your personal fishing more than any other. That said I recognize that it is vague at best…it has to be. I can’t, no one can, say that wind condition A and current system B will create result C. Well not with a modicum of humility and honesty. All I can say is think in terms of structure, which you likely already do. You won’t find downed trees, docks, or even shade. However, if you consider the wind and how it works with or against the current and how this would affect little fish and crustaceans and where best the big fish could have the best advantage over them…you will find fish.

This learning process is a slow one. It is not like learning a river. There are other factors at work as well of course. Temperature, time of day, length of day…the list is a long one. This is the pinnacle challenge of the fishery. Honestly, stripers are not generally that difficult to catch once you find them…

But first you must find them…