I missed March in the striper-a-month club because I swore off Scorton and decided to find the rumored holdovers in my own North River. I didn't find them then, but I got a good tip recently which I passed on to a friend and it worked for him, so I hit i
t tonight at dusk.
Short story: I caught two stripers, the first a good sized 18 or so inches, not remarkably fat or skinny, a good fighter which I took on the reel, and showing no signs of a particularly hard winter. The second was a runt, about 12" and underweight.
The longer story involves the BIG boils I kept seeing. Right around sunset, on the verge of darkness, there were huge boils all over the river. They didn't crash like stripers busting bait, and they certainly didn't grab infallible Ray's-fly-clousers fl
ung their way. It was like a race of giant trout sipping an unseen hatch. I was wishing for a floating line, my kayak, and some shrimp patterns [of which I had only the shrimp patterns with me] when it finally hit me:
Shad.
I'm used to shad rolling on the surface, but I'm used to seeing them further upriver at the Indian Head where it's more of a small stream and maybe they act differently there. I doubt that hundreds of ragged holdover stripers suddenly decided to bust bai
t on the surface but ignore my fly. I doubt -- against hope -- that some percentage of stocked trout survive to become 3 lb-ers and all rise in the same spot. And I'd hate to leave a fishing mystery without at least a plausible theory.
So, if you ask me, the shad are in the North River now.