A good fishing plan is cast away
By Charles Walsh
Correspondent
Updated: 08/29/2009 04:28:08 PM EDT
The day started out fine; just the right amount of overcast to keep the stripers and bluefish from needing sunglasses to see a lure moving through the water. The air temperature had dropped considerably from the brain-boiling levels of the previous week. Even better, Long Island Sound was flatter than most of the singers on "America's Got Talent." The intent was to keep the fishing simple. No messy worms, No oily bunker chunks. No heavy rods or reels.
The tackle would be a light Shimano Saros 2500f reel, loaded with 25 yards of tough braided line, backed with eight-pound test mono. All that would be affixed to a 5.6-foot-long St. Croix fast-action rod. This setup was, in my judgment, the optimum for casting from a kayak. The rod, while short and flexible, has enough backbone to create decent popping action while the reel's drag system is smooth enough and tough enough to handle any larger fish that might happen along. The lure box was loaded with four-inch Finese plastics in white and two-tone blue over silver. If those did not work, I had a selection of small poppers on which the nasty treble hooks had been replaced by single, easy to remove, bucktail-wrapped hooks of the same size.
Three feet of 40-pound fluorocarbon leader was attached to the braided line by a neat 12-turn Albright knot that slipped through the rod guides "like Budda," as Streisand says. Since toothy bluefish were the main target, I put a short, homemade wire bite guard between the
leader and the lure.
I thought I had seen to every detail.
The mile-and-a-half kayak paddle from the put-in spot, a little-used ramp near Knapp's Landing Restaurant in Stratford, to the end of the breakwater that shoots off Smith's Point in Milford was eased by a swift, outgoing tide. For at least a month, pods of small bluefish had taken up almost permanent residence in the fierce roiling rip that forms where the water coming in or out of the river mouth tears around the end of the breakwater.
Once at my destination, I quickly made a cast toward the breakwater before the current carried me into deeper water. I let the lure sink for a few seconds before flipping the bail. Barely had I made one turn on the reel handle when I felt a sharp pull on the line. The pole arced downward and line peeled off the reel. This was no small blue. My hope was that I found a stray cow striper that was hanging out in the rocks. The fish towed the kayak first toward the breakwater and then out into the river channel where power boats zoomed in both directions. I hardly had a chance to start worrying about getting swamped by the wake from a Montauk-bound cigarette boat when the line went limp.
I reeled in and saw that I had been cut clean off. It was not a striper. Even the wire bite guard was gone.
Rigging a new terminal tackle lure in a bobbing kayak with so-so eyesight is not easy even in still water, but caught as I was in the ripping current, I found myself two football fields from the end of breakwater by the time I had new wire and lure ready to cast. I paddled back against the tide taking, several cold waves into the cockpit on the way.
The lure, a popper this time, sailed out beautifully before landing smack in the middle of the breakwater rocks. I pulled hard, but the popper was solidly jammed deep in the rocks. A seagull on a nearby rock, appeared unmoved by my plight. I moved in closer to the rocks to try to wiggle the lure free. No dice. Finally, I backed the kayak off and snapped the line.
Two casts, two strikes. Yer out!
Eventually, I did manage to tie a popper directly to the braided line and catch a couple of one-pound bluefish before darkness forced me the make the long paddle against the tide back to the ramp.
Some days just go like that.
Short casts
1. It's bad for bass. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission recently decided to seek public comment on a proposal that would allow commercial fishermen to take the unused portion of their striped bass quota from one year and add it to the following year's quota. Stripers Forever, a group dedicated to making the striped bass a protected game fish, is urging recreational anglers to write or e-mail state representatives to ASMFC's Striper Board asking them to reject this proposal that would result in commercial boats being allowed to kill more stripers. David Simpson, director of the state Department of Environmental Protection Marine Fisheries Division is Connecticut's representative to on the AFSME Striped Bass panel. His address is: DEP Marine Fisheries Dept., Old Lyme, CT 06371.
2. If you are finding that you sweating more when you fished last month, it may be because surface temperatures in the world's oceans in July were the warmest on record. Temperatures broke the previous high mark set in 1998 according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for July 2009 ranked fifth-warmest since world-wide records began in 1880. Ocean surface temperatures for July 2009 were the warmest on record, at 1.06 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average of 61.5 degrees.
-- CHARLES WALSH
By Charles Walsh
Correspondent
Updated: 08/29/2009 04:28:08 PM EDT
The day started out fine; just the right amount of overcast to keep the stripers and bluefish from needing sunglasses to see a lure moving through the water. The air temperature had dropped considerably from the brain-boiling levels of the previous week. Even better, Long Island Sound was flatter than most of the singers on "America's Got Talent." The intent was to keep the fishing simple. No messy worms, No oily bunker chunks. No heavy rods or reels.
The tackle would be a light Shimano Saros 2500f reel, loaded with 25 yards of tough braided line, backed with eight-pound test mono. All that would be affixed to a 5.6-foot-long St. Croix fast-action rod. This setup was, in my judgment, the optimum for casting from a kayak. The rod, while short and flexible, has enough backbone to create decent popping action while the reel's drag system is smooth enough and tough enough to handle any larger fish that might happen along. The lure box was loaded with four-inch Finese plastics in white and two-tone blue over silver. If those did not work, I had a selection of small poppers on which the nasty treble hooks had been replaced by single, easy to remove, bucktail-wrapped hooks of the same size.
Three feet of 40-pound fluorocarbon leader was attached to the braided line by a neat 12-turn Albright knot that slipped through the rod guides "like Budda," as Streisand says. Since toothy bluefish were the main target, I put a short, homemade wire bite guard between the
leader and the lure.
I thought I had seen to every detail.
The mile-and-a-half kayak paddle from the put-in spot, a little-used ramp near Knapp's Landing Restaurant in Stratford, to the end of the breakwater that shoots off Smith's Point in Milford was eased by a swift, outgoing tide. For at least a month, pods of small bluefish had taken up almost permanent residence in the fierce roiling rip that forms where the water coming in or out of the river mouth tears around the end of the breakwater.
Once at my destination, I quickly made a cast toward the breakwater before the current carried me into deeper water. I let the lure sink for a few seconds before flipping the bail. Barely had I made one turn on the reel handle when I felt a sharp pull on the line. The pole arced downward and line peeled off the reel. This was no small blue. My hope was that I found a stray cow striper that was hanging out in the rocks. The fish towed the kayak first toward the breakwater and then out into the river channel where power boats zoomed in both directions. I hardly had a chance to start worrying about getting swamped by the wake from a Montauk-bound cigarette boat when the line went limp.
I reeled in and saw that I had been cut clean off. It was not a striper. Even the wire bite guard was gone.
Rigging a new terminal tackle lure in a bobbing kayak with so-so eyesight is not easy even in still water, but caught as I was in the ripping current, I found myself two football fields from the end of breakwater by the time I had new wire and lure ready to cast. I paddled back against the tide taking, several cold waves into the cockpit on the way.
The lure, a popper this time, sailed out beautifully before landing smack in the middle of the breakwater rocks. I pulled hard, but the popper was solidly jammed deep in the rocks. A seagull on a nearby rock, appeared unmoved by my plight. I moved in closer to the rocks to try to wiggle the lure free. No dice. Finally, I backed the kayak off and snapped the line.
Two casts, two strikes. Yer out!
Eventually, I did manage to tie a popper directly to the braided line and catch a couple of one-pound bluefish before darkness forced me the make the long paddle against the tide back to the ramp.
Some days just go like that.
Short casts
1. It's bad for bass. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission recently decided to seek public comment on a proposal that would allow commercial fishermen to take the unused portion of their striped bass quota from one year and add it to the following year's quota. Stripers Forever, a group dedicated to making the striped bass a protected game fish, is urging recreational anglers to write or e-mail state representatives to ASMFC's Striper Board asking them to reject this proposal that would result in commercial boats being allowed to kill more stripers. David Simpson, director of the state Department of Environmental Protection Marine Fisheries Division is Connecticut's representative to on the AFSME Striped Bass panel. His address is: DEP Marine Fisheries Dept., Old Lyme, CT 06371.
2. If you are finding that you sweating more when you fished last month, it may be because surface temperatures in the world's oceans in July were the warmest on record. Temperatures broke the previous high mark set in 1998 according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for July 2009 ranked fifth-warmest since world-wide records began in 1880. Ocean surface temperatures for July 2009 were the warmest on record, at 1.06 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average of 61.5 degrees.
-- CHARLES WALSH