Tuesday, December 27, 2011

2011... The year in review

It's the last week of 2011, and looking back, it's been a pretty good year.  I thought a good way to ring in the new year, would be to look back at a few highlights from the past year. 

I had a great birthday present of redfish back in the middle of February.  A friend and I hit a creek that had a ton of reds laid up in a little channel on an outgoing tide.  There was plenty of black mud and oysters to warm the water a few degrees, and the fish were willing to play.  We poled along the edge of the drop off and set up to cast into the middle of the channel.  My buddy hooked up right away and after about his 4th fish i decided I should switch over to the same fly he was using.  Good decision.  After about a dozen fish, the bite would stop and we would pole up the creek until we found the school again.  We did this several times, and between the two of us we put around 70 fish in the boat in about two hours or so.  Most were average size, but we had a couple really nice fish in the mix, and most importantly they were hungry and willing to eat a fly.










March is always a welcome sight.  You start to see all the signs of spring showing up around you.  My favorite sign of Spring is the return of the Hickory Shad to the Roanoke River at Weldon.  I've been fishing the Roanoke for a handful of years now, and I look forward to it more each Spring.   There is no better place in the world to make you feel like a great fisherman than Weldon.  After months of cold fishless days, all of a sudden there are thousands of fish waiting for you to put your fly in the water.  The shad show up at the beginning of March, and stay around through April.  Just as the shad start to depart from their spawning grounds, the striped bass start showing up.  The striped bass, or Rockfish as they're locally known, hang around into May and are just as willing to eat a fly as the shad are.  The section of river that we fish is full of large rocks just below the surface, that would love to meet the lower unit of your outboard.  It can be a treacherous place for those who have never navigated it.  I have a friend who has been fishing the river for many years, and knows it like the back of his hand.  He will take you places on that river that a sane man wouldn't attempt to go to.  But those places are stacked with fish and you won't see another soul around while catching them.  This year we hit a couple of those spots and kept our 4wts doubled over until we couldn't take any more.  One of my favorite memories from this year, was meeting Lefty Kreh on the Roanoke.  He came down to fish for a few days, and I had the pleasure of spending some time with him.  Lefty is a laugh a minute, and has a million stories to tell.  My favorite memory of meeting Lefty, was a comment he made to me over dinner at the local diner.  Lefty watched me put ketchup and sour cream on my baked potato, and replied "Good Lord son, that's disgusting, it looks like someone just vomited on your potato."


























I had the pleasure of introducing some friends to the rockfish at Weldon this April.  If you haven't been on the Roanoke River before, you are missing out.  The banks of the river are teaming with wildlife...otters, ospreys, eagles, turtles...and there's even more going on below the surface.  This is a place that I plan to return to each Spring, as long as the Good Lord lets me.

                                    


                  








In early May I made the drive down to Ft Pierce to pick up my new skiff.  The Native SUV is a 17' poling skiff that floats in less than 6" of water.  It's based off of a 1965 FiberCraft, so the hull has a classic look, but with all the refinements of a new poling skiff.  If you are looking for a flats skiff that can hang with the big boys, give Mel at Ankonaboats.com a call.  He has several different models available, and will customize them to your specs...for about half the price of any other skiff on the market.  I've been running this boat for 8 months now, and am very pleased with it's performance. 


















Later in the Spring, we spent some time in the Mountains of North Carolina with some close friends.  I try to spend some time fishing the Western part of the state at least once a year.  We split our time this year between fishing the stocked waters on the Oconaluftee Reservation in Cherokee, and the wild streams in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  We had exceptional fishing at both locations.  Fishing the "Luftee" and Raven Fork areas involve easy access to streams and lots of larger stocked trout.  A 5wt and a dozen Woolly Buggers are all you need to have a good time on these rivers...and you only need one or two woolly buggers for the fish, the other ten are to decorate the trees with. 


Cherokee is a lot of fun, but I enjoy fishing the GSMNP just as much, just in a different way.  Fishing these streams involve a lot of hiking, and sneaking around on your hands and knees to cast tiny dry flies with a 3wt rod to 5" fish.  Why would someone want to do something like that?  It's hard to explain if you haven't been there, but there's something special about casting to, and catching a little wild trout that has never seen an artificial fly or a human being.  Not to mention, those streams are some of the most beautiful places on the planet....as long as you don't come around the bend and find a naked man bathing in the stream.  Yes that happened, but that's a story for another time.





























In June I was able to experience the unbelievable fishery that is the Biloxi Marsh.  The marsh along South Eastern Louisiana is an amazing place.  It's a huge place, and I was lost the second we arrived, and stayed that way the entire day. Luckily my fishing partner, a Mississippi native, knew his way around the marsh very well.  I say fishing partner, but honestly he refused to jump off the poling platform to fish.  He pushed me the entire day.  And while doing so he showed me fish after fish after fish...thanks Dan, I owe you!  I could probably give you an estimate on how many fish we saw that day.  I could probably explain to you how willing the fish were to eat once we found the right fly.  I could probably tell you that you the fish there don't spook, even if you hit them in the head with a bad cast.  But I think the best way to describe my fishing experience that day, is to say that it ruined me.  That fishery is amazing, there is no other word to describe it.  At the end of the day, Dan told me that we did okay, but that it was a slow day, the water was too muddy and the fish weren't eating very well.  I told him that was probably for the best, because if it had been any better, I would have packed my family in the truck, hooked up the boat, and moved down there the following week. 






I had a great time fishing with a couple friends from out of state this summer.  Brian, a Texan who owns clearcuregoo.com, and Shawn, from Australia, came to NC looking to get into some fishy goodness.  Myself, along with several other local fly fishing addicts had the pleasure of hanging out with them on the water while they were down.  The morning after they got in town, we met up with another friend, Chuck, and trailered a couple boats to a secret location on the lower Roanoke River to look for striped bass.  As we drove through downtown Plymouth, you could tell by the looks on the faces of the locals that they weren't used to seeing poling skiffs being trailered through town.  We put in and ran to the secret spot to be met by a downpour of rain.  We spent the first half of the day dodging pouring rain, and catching schoolie size stripers.  Although the fishing wasn't as hot as it had been the previous week, I was able to witness Shawn catching his first striped bass, which made my day. I was really excited, because I thought that I had put him on his first "American" fish.  I later found out that Brian had taken Shawn to a stocked pond the day before and had put him on his first "American" fish....a golf course pond bluegill.
Later that afternoon, we met up with our buddy Fred, to give the boys a shot at a tailing redfish.  We made the run up towards a flooded flat and set up a few hundred yards apart.  We saw the first tailing fish within a minute of killing the motor, and saw several more through the flood tide.  Neither Shawn nor Brian hooked up with a red that evening, but everyone had a great time hanging out on the water.  I look forward to hitting the water again with these guys.

















We've got some local flats that fill up with sharks throughout the summer.  I didn't have much time to mess with them on fly this year but I was able to take a few friends out to get their first shark.  I would have to describe this style of shark fishing as being pretty similar to tarpon fishing in the keys.  We stake out in a few feet of water on flats that are adjacent to drop offs and channels.  The water is crystal clear, so you can see the sharks coming from quite a distance away.  These fish are super spooky and they'll bolt off the flats if you even blink at them.  It's mostly a waiting game, but the payoff is a lot of fun when they roll up on the flats and find your bait. 






























Although the redfish bite on the local mudflats was a bit slow this year, we had an exceptional season in the spartina grass.  We had shots at any where from a ten to twenty redfish, every time we poled up on the spartina flats during a flood tide.  The tailing reds gave us plenty of opportunities this year, and a well presented fly would usually be devoured by the redfish.  This is definitely the kind of fishing where you have to bring your A-Game.  As long as the fish is busy chasing prey and it doesn't notice your presence, you will have an opportunity to make multiple casts to it.  These fish are really focused on what they are eating, so if your cast lands outside of their focus range it will be ignored...if it lands too close, they will bolt.  This is one of my favorite and most rewarding types of fishing.  I hope 2012 is as good as 2011 was in the grass.

















The last few months of this year have been spent chasing speckled trout.  The bad news is that most of these fish have been on the small side.  The good news is that there are a ton of specks, and with the mild winter we are having, these fish should survive and provide us with an excellent trout fishery next year.  These fish are more than willing to eat a little fly and we've had days when a hundred trout can be caught on a 4wt in a matter of hours.  As long as water temps don't drop too much, they should hang around well into January. 

Well, that's 2011 in a nutshell.  I'm looking forward to light winds and big fish in 2012.  Happy New Year.