I got the phone call the other night. Y'know, the one that starts off something like, "You got any plans tomorrow morning?" And then before you know it, you've made plans to leave before daylight to head to some hot fishing location. I'm usually real quick to say yes to those invites, which can sometimes get me into trouble...or like this one, lead to an amazing day on the water.
I rolled out of bed at around 4am the following morning, asking myself what I was thinking. I'm not usually a morning person, except when i've got a date with some fish...but 4am was a bit much, even for going fishing. I met up with Chuck Laughridge in Newbern and we made our way North to the Roanoke River. We put the boat in at a little hot spot downstream a ways from the world famous Weldon, NC. Before long, we were were dropping anchor, and both doubled up with Rockfish on our first casts.
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| Andrew's first fish on fly. |
Within 2 hours we had hit somewhere near seventy stripers, and an hour later I stopped counting at a hundred. No monsters were landed but we had quite a few fish between 3 and 5lbs...which is a lot of fun on little 5 and 6wt fly rods. The highlight of the morning wasn't the fish, but an 8 year old named Andrew, that we met on the river. His brother and father accompanied him, and they were being introduced
to the stripers by a mutual friend of ours.
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| Number three on the fly. |
His little brother was in desperate need of a potty break, so their crew decided to make a run back to the ramp. We asked if Andrew could jump onboard with us while they were gone so he could continue fishing. We only had to ask once and Andrew was climbing aboard our boat. In less than 20 minutes time we gave him a crash coarse on basics of casting a fly rod, stripping the line, setting the hook and fighting a fish. We did the casting for him, but let him handle the catching...and by the time his ride showed back up, he was in the process of landing his fourth
striped bass on fly.
Andrew continued to cheer us on from across the river through the rest of the morning. We returned the favor and cheered for him everytime he hooked up on his spinning rod. Although he held his own on the spinning rod, I've got to imagine he asked his dad for a flyrod before the day was over. Chuck took a few of the photos on this report, so a big thanks to him for that and for the invite to go fishing.
This little guy was gutsy, the fly was as big as him.
The death of a fly line.
I got the phone call the other night. Y'know, the one that starts off something like, "You got any plans tomorrow morning?" And then before you know it, you've made plans to leave before daylight to head to some hot fishing location. I'm usually real quick to say yes to those invites, which can sometimes get me into trouble...or like this one, lead to an amazing day on the water.
I rolled out of bed at around 4am the following morning, asking myself what I was thinking. I'm not usually a morning person, except when i've got a date with some fish...but 4am was a bit much, even for going fishing. I met up with Chuck Laughridge in Newbern and we made our way North to the Roanoke River. We put the boat in at a little hot spot downstream a ways from the world famous Weldon, NC. Before long, we were were dropping anchor, and both doubled up with Rockfish on our first casts. 
