Well, I've been visiting this site for over two years now and fit somewhere in
that gray area between a regular and a lurker. I don't post my reports as much
as other people on the board, but thats mainly because I fish so often, without
many dramatic results worth posting about. I do post a lot of questions and
have found this BBS and its members to be a great source of information.
I grew up in Salem, Massachusetts and spent my summers working on the water
working in Salem and Marblehead. Surfcasting and Striper fishing was just
something that you heard of people doing, but for some reason I never took it
up. There just weren't that many fish around, and the thought of cut bait
fishing from the beach didn't interest me too much.
When I wasn't working, I spent my weekends at a small lake in New Hampshire,
where I became an avid bass fisherman. During college at UNH I got the fishing
bug again, and bought my first fly rod to fish the local put and take rivers.
After not having much success, I met up with one of the local fishing writers
who spent the rest of the day teaching me about fly fishing, and the river we
were on. From that day on, I have been hooked.
After college, got married, and moved to an apartment in Newburyport, mainly
because Nbpt was 1/2 way between where my wife and I worked. Back then, I used
to get home from work a couple hours earlier than the wife, so I started heading
down to Plum Island to walk around. Of course, the beach was jammed with
baitcasters.
At first I assumed that things hadn't changed much since I was a kid, but
something had changed, there were stripers around, and lots of them. At first
I was discouraged by the fact that everyone was using bait, but when I saw
started to see how big these fish were, I quickly overcame my reservations.
The next day I was at Kittery Trading Post picking up a new saltwater rod. The
rest of that summer I had good success, and discovered this board, as well as
Mark Cahill's excellent site.
That next year I started to notice more fly-fishers around, but during the
times that I was fishing, they didn't have much success. It wasn't until I
started learning more about the area and how to fish (through this BBS) it that
I started seeing people catching fish on the fly.
Finally, in October of last year, I somehow decided that I was going to instantly
take up Saltwater fly fishing. I left work early, stopped down at Kittery
Trading Post again, and picked up a new outfit. Later that evening I was down
at Sandy Point catching schoolies. I took the next few days off and had great
success catching the plentiful fish in the area.
This past winter was spent tying flies and reading anything and everything I
could find on the subject. Once spring rolled around, I fished 95% of the time
with my fly rod.
In the beginning of June, we had a daughter, which didn't slow down my fishing
time much, but definitely took a big bite out of my plans to buy a small boat.
I started using a canoe to fish the Joppa Flats area, and have slowly been
expanding my area a little at a time, as I get more comfortable playing with the
tides and wind out there.
So far this year I have caught a ton of fly-rod fish (over 200 in 90 hours of
fishing), but the biggest has only been around 24-26". I'm still learning,
and through the help of this BBS am really enjoying the fishing around here, and
can't believe how lucky I am to have settled on living in Newburyport,
especially since my wife and I both have changed jobs and have bought our first
house here.
So, if you are ever in the area and see a guy in a green canoe fly-fishing
standing up, come over and say hi, and help me figure out how I can convince my
wife to let me buy a boat.
-- Tom