Stripers

Stripers seem to be transitioning over into their summer patterns in the area. Water temps are up and we have had a couple of weeks of hot, humid weather. I haven't made any terribly long excursions into the salt lately but have been sneaking out for a couple hours here and there. I was still catching fish every time out until last night where I pulled a skunk for the first time since the first day of the season for me. It was still a beautiful evening to be out.

I still haven't seen any great action outside around the structure but reports have been coming of people finding some fish out there and offshore too. I've mostly stuck to the beaches close to the rivers and estuaries. One night last week I saw some pretty good surface activity as it got dark. Normally I don't see much sustained surface feeding this time of year so it was encouraging. There is still lots of small bait including herring and sand eels around. A couple of times last night the terns were in a frenzy picking off the small bait trapped against a sandbar or shoreline. I didn't see a single fish though in all the activity.

Lately the most consistent fly I've been using is this size 2 guitar minnow which I have a lot of confidence in for matching the small bait we have around right now. Initially it might just look like a half & half clouser minnow but there has been a lot of fine tuning and tweaking of the pattern to improve it. I'll go to this fly over any normal 1/2 and 1/2 and sometimes those little subtle differences make all the difference.