Small bait frustration

[nrthshoreflyguy]

I have recently been finding lots of schools of bass, often big ones, feeding on very small peanut bunker, like 1 to 2 inches. The fish have been aggressivly feeding in large schools yet I can not for the life of me get consistant hook ups. Probably getting about one strike for every 20-25 casts into the action, and the fish I am catching are all relativly small compared to the fish I am seeing in the schools. I've tried everything, small flies that match the hatch, big flies, weird colors, poppers, every different retreive could think up.....and nothing seemed to produce consistantly....the last few days fishing for me have been some of the most frustrating of my life, watching fish literally boil around my legs, and not being able to buy a strike...I'm getting close to whipping out the fillet knife and getting ugly, I think I would have better luck it. Is anybody else on the north shore experiencing this same problem when finding fish on the small peanuts? If anybody has got some ideas please share them....

[ag1]

The same thing has been happening along the Plum Island beachfront. The schools keep popping up in the wash and won't take much. I guess with so much bait it's hard to get the stripers' attention.

[scruffy_fish]

FWIW try this, It may or may not be the ticket. Tie up some smallish mushies with red colored eyes. I've found that often a small change has worked on picky fish. I've found that size is first then color that they seek out. ;)

[Sentience]

i have definitely run into this problem with all type of bait, but especially with peanuts. with peanuts what works the best seems like the least elegant and that is taking a fairly fully tied clouser and chopping it a little shorter. then let it sink a little bit, then strip her in. olive over chartreuse over white works well.

sometimes i throw a fly at least twice the size of the peanuts out there. this pushes them away from your fly and leaves a window with only your fly showing. it doesn't always work but it is definitely worth a shot.

lastly, i think that flash only confuses things in this situation. there are so many flashing bunker that i go with the opposite.

i love things like this. it sort of reminds me of solving picky trout problems.

three years ago there were literally acres of bunker around in the fall. i spent a lot of time in this situation. at times the entire bowl of certain 127 beaches was breaking fish.

[e-sea-e]

this is how we dealt with that problem, but it will involve picking up a spinning rod.

If there are good surface feeds of small fish, there are bigger ones underneath, no suprise there. But, if you throw on a large rapala that runs fairly deep, you can throw it past the surface feed, and crank like mad, really burn it until it is under the school of feeding fish. then stop it, then start it again. This will get the lure under the surface feeding fish, into the bigger fish feeding on the scraps, and may trigger an impluse strike from the bigger fish underneath. dosent matter what color or size, just burn it under the feeds stopping occasionally. we did this in some awesome blitzes in front of lynn beach two years ago and caught many 35-45 inch fish while everyone else caught 12-14 inch schollies.

It's not guarenteed, but I try it every time I see those little guys busting on top. One time I got a 37 pounder. give it a shot.

[haguebrook]

This is exactly what I encountered in CCB this weekend. The water was boiling with little bait fish. I had great luck with an olive sand eel pattern that had a good bit of flash to it.

[striper59mike]

Had the exact same format happen to me on Saturday morning, lots of fish feeding on the surface, and all around me but great difficulty having hookups. Am pondering what action to take, I am leaning to getting the fly in and down under the action and just giving the ocasional twitch to get attention, difficult to do with all the excitment and action going on all around, a more disciplined approach may work. I will try it out next chance I get. :rolleyes:

[canalyaker]

I have had some luck getting some of the larger fish below to hit a fly below a splasher, casting egg, or plug. I have not tried a fly below a corkie on the fly rod, but it may be worth a try. That's if the fish ever get within range! The surface commotion may create a "space" as suggested earlier.

[no problem]

Water was boiling Friday eve...we thru in everything we had with no hook ups....then went from intermdiate to a fast sink line and the world turned a bit brighter...they ended up hitting a very small blue/white deciever.

[striper man]

i have had luck throwing a med bunker fly and stripping it back very slowly every other cast i nailed a schoolie

[zipp]

Had the same problem on spinning gear in Plymouth/duxbury Bay this past weekend. Wanted to start a post but didn't out of fear of sounding like an amateur. I threw everything (and I mean everything) in the spinning arsenal at them. In no particular order, I tried sluggo's (black, white, neon green, neon green with sparkles), rubber baby stripers, rubber shad, floating and diving Yozuri's, deadly dicks (assorted sizes), Hopkins' (plain, with bucktail and with small green tube), rubber eels and tube and worm. All with a variety of retrievals.

Had some luck with the green sluggo's and the rubber baby stripper, but the problem is that there were just enough blues mixed in that a rubber bait that worked only lased a couple of casts before being destroyed.

If anybody has something or some method that works in these types of pods, I'd love to hear it.

With that much surface action it should've meant a hook up on everyother cast! :mad:

[SamRiley]

Fish we were on last week were filled with 1/2 - 1" PBs. This worked.

[rockfisherman]

Fish off to the sides of the busting fish and the bait balls. There will be fish cruising the outside of the bait balls and they are apt to take a baitfish (or your fly) that has strayed from the bait ball.

[Dub]

I've been having lot's of luck with a white/chartreuse clouser with red eyes and substantial flash.

[chathamgreg]

Fish around the edges of the blitz, not in the middle of it. If in deep water getting under it works as well.

[haguebrook]

I agree that the edge of the blitz works best. I was doing well when casting to deeper water beyond the blitz. The fish were is less than 2 feet of water in many cases. I would get a strike as soon as the fly sank 2-3 seconds.

Here is a pic of what was working for me. As a non-tyer, I got it from www.ncflies.com.

[SherpaB]

I like the small puglisi's and small bunny flies. Puglisi's are a pain to tie but really effective. I tie the small peanuts on #2 or #4 hooks and paste some big eyes one them-worked well last year but havent seen them or tried them this year....the bunnys are the best. anything with a brown or grey bunny strip pasted or tied to the top of the shank should work pretty good. I use a variation of the Double bunny trout fly. Both pattern types have great action . Also the big ones hang low catching the peanuts who are wounded sometimes. I fast sinker cast to the edge of the school/blitz and allowed to sink might result in bigger fish if the little ones dont take it first...saw a few schools busting off of dev beach this am (11ish)

[dcobbett]

Nrthshoreflyguy,

Try these suggestions; they have worked for me over the last few years in the Swampscott to Manchester area.

Use a Gartside Soft Hackle tie (white, include the tail flash as per Jack's tying instructions), with a topping of dark Polar Fiber (usually dark blue, sometimes I add chartruse as an under topping) with blue/green flash. Tie them in a variety of lenghts, but mainly short.

Try throwing a small (lenght), slim/sparse Ray's Fly.

I usually tie both flies on #1 or 1/0. Often, I tie the Rays Fly Thunder Creek style which prevents fouling and developes a "slimmer" profile.

Fish the fly as a cripple; let it sink and just keep some tension/feel on the fly using a hand twist type retrieve. Often, larger fish swim around under the bait balls picking up the drops and cripples that are easy targets.

If these suggestions fail, you can always do what I did one day. Brought my oldest son along and while I was throwing my arm out of the socket, he was hooking fish after fish on a 7/8 oz Gibbs Popper (he doesn't fly fish).

[JohnnyR]

crease flies on the outside edges of the blitz, pop and pause

[nrthshoreflyguy]

thanks for all the info......I think I finally found a method that worked today, peanut fly with some chartuese and pink in it and a little larger then the bait....was casting into the blitz, then just giving it short strips and a long pause...got a fish on most good casts...still nothin real big, but better then I was doin before.

[zipp]

To answer my own question on the spinning side, small 3 1/2" white/silver rubber shads seem to do the trick retrieved quickly to avoid getting chomped.

[scruffy_fish]

All the above, sounds like everyone is re-living the original post.
"I tried everything " --126-3- ;)

[rel]

Northshoreflyguy- Sometimes doing nothing gets better results. In your case I would try just letting the fly slowly sink and maybe give it a twitch every once in a while. The larger fish aren't going to expend the energy to chase the small bunker, but they will take one that's injured and just sinking. I had this happen in RI during a bluefish "blitz". The blues had the bunker pushed up along the beach and you could watch the blues riding along the outside of the bunker keeping them along the beach. These blues were really picky and with about 100 people trying and getting no where fast, I ddropped the fly in the water along the line of blues and set the rod down in the stripping basket long enough to get a smoke lit. When I picked up the rod again I noticed the fly twitched and one of the blues made a bee line for it. After that I repeated the scenario- let the fly sink and once near the bottom give it alittle twitch. I was catching fish everytime and most were the larger ones in the parade. Many of the spinning guys were dumbfounded because they had the hottest lures of the day(before) and they were getting skunked. It is worth a shot when nothing else is working. By the way my p'bunker pattern is a blonde with a throat that extends back along the tail about 3/4's of the tail's length.