Fly Fishing

Joe_M · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 10:05 am Post subject: Finding Bait in the Salt

Hi everyone,

I'm a west coast transplant new to the Boston area, and quite the newbie at saltwater fishing.

My question is how do you find the bait fish when you are confined to the shore?

Will they always be on top and indicated by nervous water or indicated by birds, or do you sometimes just have to fish the structure and hope they are just deeper than you can see?

Any help or insight is appreciated.

Joe

jeremy · Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 8:23 am Post subject: great question

great question. so, moving to boston .. we are talking about stripers, bluefish and albies and bonito on the islands .... but let's just talk stripers ... look for "fish" not "bait" .. and that is if you are looking for busting fish on top or sightfishing on the flats ... but you can definately go out and fish structure and catch plenty of fish ... but the ocean is big, so narrow down your "guess" work as much as possible .. tides are very important and i like the dropping tide and first half of the incoming ... "high tide" is kinda analageous to blown out trout streams .. there is just too much water ... also, find any mouths of rivers or little rivers also called "guts" between the ocean and ponds ... on an outgoing tide .. all of the bait and stuff that you don't necessarily see is pouring out into the ocean and fish will be attracted to that ... and staging up at the mouth of that area .... also, consider this .. let's take the mississipi river for example ... that river is dumping into the ocean at some point .. so let's assume we were striper fishing ... one could argue that the "good spots" is 10 miles in every direction of the mouth of the river .. so, don't forget to think on a "bigger" scale .. you don't have to see the mississip river to be fishing "the mouth of it" .. make sense ..

sorry - kinda rambling -- bottom line is this .. find a fly shop in boston to give you some good spots .. get some white deceivers of various sizes and some clousers of various colors .. you may show up to your spots at various tides and times of day and see nothing but catch a ton ... you may show up to your spots and see fish smashing all over the bait on top .. and if you can get your fly into the mix you will catch plenty .. but if you don't see surface action or not interested in tracking fish on the flats .. than just blind cast around structure, rivers etc.. and hang on .. just cuz you don't see the fish doesn't mean they are not there ... good luck.

ChrisR · Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:12 am Post subject:

Great advice dude. Since I'll be moving in the same general area I'm definitely going to be focusing more of my attention to salt fish on the fly now.

Joe_M · Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 5:37 am Post subject:

Thanks for the advice Jeremy. I was out again on Sunday...no great success but I did finally catch a little striper and learned alot. Still haven't found any fish bustin the surface or the bait all piled up yet though. So I just fished the outflows from channels in a local saltmarsh on a dropping tide. There were a couple of regulars to the area who seemed to think that fishing was pretty crappy that day, but I at least caught one.

I'll be up in Maine this weekend. My sister in-law has a place on Hills Beach Road. Any recommendations? The Pool, the jetty, the bay?

jeremy · Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 8:02 pm Post subject: funny

that's funny ... there was a ton of bait, birds and fish .. right off hills beach last week .. water is really warming up now .. i would focus on the "outside" .. walk that beach ... or drive and look for birds or busting fish .. early morning and evening you should be able to find them ... you should be able to find some nice fish too .. plenty of them up here in maine right now .... water temps are good and plenty of bait ... clousers on the flats and big deceivers or whatnot on the ledges .. ... also, check out "saco bay tackle" in saco or "the tackle shop"in portland .. both will be able to put you in the right direction ... bluefish are in too ... your in the right area for sure.. good luck