Hit a CT LIS tidal pond last night from 8.30pm - 2am and was joined by The Fisherman and Ed Simpson. I never mean to stay that long. Time just passes. Last night it was the torturous sight and sound of hundreds of stripers gorging (I swear they were laughing) right in front of me. It kept me transfixed for hours. But let's just be clear: this was a sadistic, painful kind of fun.
It all started rather well, dead drifting a three fly cast of chartreuse epoxy shrimp, transparent/orange epoxy shrimp, and a small GP that last saw action for salmon in Scotland. Shrimp are definitely on the menu at this spot, with huge numbers of the 1 to 2" beasties. With no bass moving on the surface at this point I decided just to sit on a rock, smoke an Ashton cigarillo (deeply yummy), the occasional swig of Tomatin 10 yr old, and limber up with a few roll casts. Pleasant, then, to shake recent skunkings by taking two fish by dead drifting the flies in the incoming current (they liked the chartreuse). A good start - wait 'til the fish get up on top!
And get up on top they did. Everywhere. The slurping, the popping, crashing, the laughing at me. On a windless, moonlit night, it was quite a thing to see, but only a measly 2 fish followed in the next several hours (both on the transparent/orange shrimp), and that is a deep mystery to me, because:
- I was covering fish the whole time;
- The fish were feeding uninhibited;
- I know what they were eating and I think I had a good match (I also fished a silverside pattern for zero love);
- I fished well (that is to say my flies were in the water all night long) and my drifts felt good; I tried EVERY conceivable angle/strip/dead drift etc.
- I already knew that some fish agreed with me that the epoxy shrimp looked a bit like the real thing;
- I fished lighter tippet than usual, scaling down to 15lb then 10lb, in case the 20 was upsetting the fish;
- I've been a good boy recently, honest.
But still the bass ignored our offerings, and there we were. Three grown men, in the middle of the night, the sea churned to a raucous froth with nice chubby bass. I drove home with a vacant feeling. I'd had my backside handed to me on a silver salver by these fish.
I vow to return. I will catch them. And in the meantime I'll be napping under my desk, trying for the life of me to figure out how.
--Jon
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