A day that had it all

 After struggling for a long period, the day before I wasn’t sure how it would play out as I jumped on the boat. We had started fishing together just after the full moon period, the tides were getting smaller, and the weather was very changeable. Given how barren the offshore action had been yesterday it was clear the fish were covering huge distances and not really holding in areas outside of the harbour. We decided to pass on the live bait collection again and got straight to business on a fishy spot on the corner of an island with a rip. Joe hadn’t got the boat into position, and I was straight into a fish on the glide bait. With another awesome sunrise in full effect, it was another great memory for me to take away from my trip.

Joe then repositioned the boat to drift onto the rip and we were both into stripers. It was very much like fishing for bass at home with the fish being on the upside of the rip. I couldn’t help thinking how good it would have been to fish spots like the this from the shore at night for fish like these, someday maybe.

Before we left the dock Joe got a tip that there was a big blitz near Boston light at 8am the day before. Given how we had struggled he decided to go and check it out, maybe they would make an appearance again. As we got closer, we could see birds, boats and stripers hitting bait. There was wind against a strong ebb flow which made it sloppy and with other boats in the area just a little bit chaotic. The other boats had ring fenced the blitz at that point and with a view to some kind of etiquette in our entrance to the mayhem we looked for a spot. I clocked a few fish on the right-hand side and Joe edged the boat in that direction. This proved to be a stroke of luck as the minute our lures hit the water we were doubled up. As it happened the fish were moving towards us. I think we were doubled up three times back-to-back with some serious fish. When the fly rod came out, I was a bit of shambles, after throwing lures then switching to 10 weight my casting was poor. I managed to slow things down after a few minutes and Joe threw a 9-inch spook with no hooks to tease the fish within range of my fly.

After coming close on numerous occasions I had my 40+inch striper

When things died down, we went slowly around the area keeping our eyes peeled for breaking fish. I decided to put the fly line out the back, Joe asked me to slowly work the fly with long pulls and a drop back. I had just commented on how good it must have been fishing when I hooked up. The fly line left the reel along with most of the backing but after a few moments I got broken. That one hurt, even after all the fish I had caught this week.

Sunrise eats, blitzes, fly rod action and a trip PB, the day that had it all. I had started to think about going home and how the last day would pan out. This would have been a good point for my trip to end but I had another day. Having been completely sated by the fishing experience over the last four days anything else would be gravy.