July stripers

Got a late start on the striper season this year due mostly to family commitments but since late June and right through July I've been fishing as much as possible.  I made about a dozen trips out to the salt both from the boat and shore.  This July has been some of the best mid summer fishing I've ever had.  The numbers of fish weren't the same as past years but the consistency of the fishing, quality of the fish and the different fishing opportunities that presented itself have been amazing.  In all those trips I only got shut out once and that was on the shortest trip which consisted of a quick couple of hours before work.

I've had a chance to fish with a few new people.  James from Big Pike Flies visited all the way from Iowa to give striper fishing a try.  We worked hard for them but he ended up catching the big striper of the day 2 days in a row.  I also got to fish with a new friend of mine Travis who is becoming a pretty hard core chaser of stripers on the fly.

Lots of bait around this year especially sandeels.  It seems like they have brought the fish into the shallow flats after them.  Crabs continue to be effective also.  Sight fishing on the flats has been very good.  The size of the fish combined with how shallow they have been going and the bright sun have made for a lot of fun.  I've had many schools of fish and large singles swim right up to me this summer.  Sometimes all I need to do is get a fly out to them and they'll eat and other times they don't seem as interested and need a more precise presentation.

The more I get out the more in touch with what is going on I get and the success and enjoyment increases.  Here are a just a few pics from this season.

 

 Solid striper taken first outing of the year on a foggy morning.

Blackbird fools another one in the dark.

Ridiculous day of 30"+ fish.

Grocery pollock gets chewed on by this 32 incher.

John releasing another one.

Flats release

James hooked up again.

Big striper flies is more like it.

Another one sent back.

Working the rocks.

Travis with an early morning flats fish.

Sand eels on the flats.

Chased these little guys in the surf one beautiful, sunny morning while they chased around scattered schools of sandeels.

Had to work hard for this one which I could see swim up and eat a crab.

Tying with the boys

My twin 7 year old boys have become more interested in flytying this winter.  They have actually started to ask to tie flies occasionally.  Usually it's some pattern they see in a picture or magazine that is so complicated and requires dozens of rare and expensive materials.  By the time we sit down to tie I can usually convince them to try something a little more simple.  Over the winter we've tied up various streamers, nymphs and foam bugs.  This weekend they saw some crease flies and gurglers I have stuck in some foam on the wall and they wanted to give them a try.  First Keegan had to tie up a foam ant since his brother tied one up a couple weeks ago and he didn't have one in his collection yet.  After we got through that I helped Kai tie up a crease fly and Keegan a gurgler.  The best part to them was tying the flies with white foam so they could color them up with permanent markers after.  We caught a few little native brook trout in a local stream on worms this weekend.  We'll have to start trying a few flies soon.

Couple of favorite pike flies

Ken at Pike Adventures asked me what's been working for me for pike flies so I threw up a few pics.  These flies might seem a little fancy and fragile compared to most pike flies but I really enjoy tying them.  I love tying with natural materials like bucktail, marabou and feathers and mixing all the different colors together...oh and they usually need to have lots of mixed flash although I noticed I cut back on flash on one of these.  These guys really swim fished fast or slow.  I try to balance them so they don't immediately dive nose down on the pause and instead sit there horizontal or slowly glide downward.  For this reason I don't normally add eyes or epoxy towards the front and try to use lighter wire hooks.  Yellow perch and other combos with orange and chartreuse have worked best for me.  I can't wait to get out there and fish them.