Exhausting weekend

[bpmurray]

<P>I noticed the number of postings that say they haven't caught anything. I'm a little surprised since I caught over 100 mackeral and more than 40 stripers over the weekend, and all from shore. The biggest were only around 26", but that didn't matter.</P><P>The macks are thick around Salem Willows on the incoming tide, and make excellent striper bait. The best day was Monday - I went out to Misery Island with my family, and sneaked off for a couple of hours non-stop stripers from the rocks at Wild Cove. I noticed boats passing by and they didn't seem to be having much luck - the fish were tight up against the rocks. They seemed to like 2" strips of mackeral free-lined and moving -&nbsp;I hooked up about every 3-5 mins, after experimenting with chunks (not interested) and strips on a bobber (not interested in these either). One (presumably keeper-sized) stripped a goodly length of line from the reel before snapping the line at the hook.</P><P>And for those who poo-poo bait-fishing, every single one of them was hooked perfectly through the corner of the mouth and back in the water in seconds.</P><P>B=</P>

[johnkelly]

Is this a saltwater flyfishing web-site or a combo of both fly and spin.
JK

[mdglaw]

I know that I use both fly and spin. I have not uncased my fly rod for salt this year. Most days out have had heavy winds or some other factor. Drudging the bottom blind casting with a clouseer is not sportingly different from casting with spinning gear, and a lot more work. I don't think it is what the equipment you use is, but how you approach the game. They key to the users of this forum is respect, for the quarry we pursue, to the environment, and to our fellow fishers.
fish long and prosper
Mike

[PointDiver]

Thanks for the report. Most of us like fishing information, and we need ALL the reports we can get. I had a slow weekend in manomet with some blues @ the surface around the outflow of the nuke.

[NarraSteve]

While reports are great, it might be good to keep the majority of the content aimed towards saltwater fly fishing.
Kind of like the tag line up top......

[bpmurray]

<P>Since I try all sorts of methods, I reported on whatever I tried. I think what caused the responses was my comment about the sanctimonious folk who believe that fly-fishing is the only correct way to fish, and that all others hurt fish, in particular those who chunk.</P>
<P>For example, this evening I fished from Waterside Cemetary - it's a 70-degree rock slope behind me, so fly is out of the question. Should this mean that I don't post a report? Please let me know, and I'll only post fly reports.</P>
<P>Just to follow up - I started at around 5:30, and watched the birds going crazy up by the West Shore Landing. They made their way down as far as the docks at Sunset Rd and turned around. There were splashes and jumps and mucho frustration from me, since they stopped 150 yds short. They looped through this a couple of times, and then at last, they decided to come past the cemetary. This was now 7:00 - 90mins of total frustration and being eaten by no-see-ums. They shot past (I got a couple on a small bucktail) and they started again 150 yds at the other side of the cemetary. This was really getting annoying.</P>
<P>Anyway, they kept this up, passing me a couple of times more before wandering off&nbsp; to the center of Harbor at around 8:00. I only caught 5 (all around 20"), but had I been anywhere else, I'm pretty certain it would have been easily into double digits. If anyone had been in a boat, and could follow them around, they would have caught a serious number of fish.</P>
<P>Interestingly, the last one I caught was&nbsp;only a couple of feet&nbsp;from the shore, in only 6" of water.</P>
<P>This isn't a fly report, but it tells about a large number of fish on the surface, chasing huge schools of baitfish, in Salem Harbor where I haven't seen this behavior up to now this year. I believe people who fish Salem Harbor are interested in knowing that visiting West Shore Landing tomorrow evening is probably going to yield pretty good results.</P>
<P>B=</P>