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Date: August 15, 2008 at 11:51:43
From: MarkG, [ool-182df70f.dyn.optonline.net]
Subject: I Will Take What I Can Get


Why I like to tie?

Two nights ago (mid-August) I went down to fish the first half of outgoing in an estuary. There was an approaching full moon with scattered thin clouds. High tide wasn't nearly as high as I expected it to be. I hadn't been to this spot in a few weeks and found the sandy beach area that is about 40 feet deep from the edge of the water at medium tide was under 6 inches of sea lettuce. This sea lettuce went another 20 feet out into the water. Last season you couldn't a buy a piece of sea lettuce. In the area where the sea lettuce was under the water it rose to about 8 inches from the water's surface. It was also in this area that there were little pops and splashes. I casted to this area for quite a while with different flies and rigs and came up short save a splash near my first cast. I tried for a long time. It wasn't until after I failed to catch anything that I went scouting to see what the fish were feeding on over the sea lettuce. I found in that thin water column plenty of large 5 and 6 inch silversides.

The next evening I tied up a tan color foam backed fly on a Mustad 3407 #1/0 hook with a narrow 3-inch olive saddle over white bucktail with a few strands of gold flash and rainbow crystal flash with a pearl body. The fly was about 4 1/2 inches. I would be able let this fly to drift over the sea lettuce without getting caught up in it as well as bring attention to itself with its subtle "V" wake.

I went down a few hours later than the night before when I predicted the most silversides would be in that area. It was a somewhat different night than before. There was heavy cloud coverage that screened out the moon's intensity. In the far distance, veering on the look of a cheap theater set, lightning glowed on and off from three directions in hues of yellow and orange. There was only a light wind that allowed for the gnats to cover my face most of the time. They worked my patience but I had to see if this fly would do it.

You must know that even though there is a lot of bait there were only a few splashes heard over a few hours between two nights. So there were very few fish around, creating very little competition.

Before I went to test this fly out in the spot it was designed for I tried it in a few other areas with no luck. Suddenly I heard a splash over the eel grass and submerged sea lettuce area and so I headed over to my casting position for that spot. I first made a number of very short 15 to 20-foot casts right along the sod bank without success. I followed that up with a very long cast that would swing around to the sea lettuce area and then I let it sit...I put a wiggle in the line with my 10 and half foot rod that brought some weight to the line and I hooked a whopping 14" shad in the corner of the mouth. SUCCESS! I was truly happy. Little splashes continued every few minutes in that same area so I continued to work the fly around the area and picked up one more 14-inch shad again in the corner of the mouth. I mention in the corner of the mouth because often when I take shad--aggressive shad that are in big schools--the hook ups tend mostly to be in the top lip. But these isolated little shad were feeding calmly and not competitively so it took the right presentation in the right place to get one to rise and turn on the fly.


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