Fly
Fishing for Shark Bait - Nantucket - July 19, 2007
JN booked a trip with Cross Rip Outfitters (
www.crossrip.com
) located in
Madaket, MA to do some sight fly fishing for striped bass. Our guide for
the day was Capt. Lynne Burchell Heyer. We left the dock at around
8:00am and headed out towards the Atlantic Ocean on the southwest side of
Nantucket.
The
weather forecast called for rain and heavy fog. We only got hit
with a little drizzle of rain but we did run into a lot of fog.
The fog made it pretty tough to navigate and impossible to sight cast.
Because
the weather was not cooperating Lynne said our best bet was to go for
Bonita or Blues. JN tossed some salt water flies out and I used
a spinner rod with a popper but neither of us had much
success. Since the tide was slack, and we had some time to kill,
Lynne showed me the basics of fly fishing. Having only attempted
fly fishing a few other times, without much success, I was happy to
finally have someone show me how its done. The
first hour of my casting was pretty ugly but by the time the tide
started back up I had learned enough to get my fly out within reach of
the
fish.
Once
the tide started really moving we ran into some huge schools of
bluefish. There were so many of them that you could sight cast
for them by looking for their fins coming up out of the water.
It took me plenty of casts but I finally caught my first salt water
fish on a fly rod! JN had been talking up fly fishing and
now I saw why. It is a more challenging style of
fishing but the fight you get on a fly rod can't be beat.
By
about 1pm the sun finally came out and we had caught our fill of
bluefish. We headed over to Tuckernuck Island with hopes of
catching some striped bass. On the coast of Tuckernuck the water
is only around 3-6 feet deep and because it is so clear you can see
right down to the bottom. It reminded me of the flats off
Florida.
Lynn
turned off the motor and began to use a long pole to push us throught
the flats. JN got up on the bow of the boat and got ready with
the fly rod. I hopped up on the front seat of the center console
and tried to help find some fish. At the end of our first drift
we saw a huge 34" bass go by. To see a bass that big just
swimming around is pretty cool but to see one in that little amount of
water was amazing. We made a few more drifts and on each one we
saw more bass. Some schools had as many as 7 fish. They
were just cruising around looking for crabs. Sometimes they
would even swim on their sides along the sandy bottom to get off the
sea lice. We weren't able to get any on the boat but just seeing
them that close was awesome.
The
Oak Bluffs Monster Shark Tournament was held last weekend in Martha's
Vineyard. One of Lynne's friends needed some bait for the
tournament so we were happy to help out. We gave them plenty of
bluefish to use as bait. Too bad their coolers were
full!
NSAC Copyright 2006.
For problems or questions regarding this web contact info@northshoreanglersclub.com
.
Last updated: November 02, 2009.