Saturday, March 31, 2012

Things are looking up...

The last few trips to the marsh have been showing a lot of promise for the upcoming season.  A week ago, I hit the waterway and ran back behind the barrier islands to see if anyone was home.  I came up on some small winding creeks and jumped up on the platform and started poling. 

It didn't take long to start spotting the pushes of several fish in front of me.  I watched reds swim around the skiff at each turn in the creek.  At a split in the creek, I staked out and saw numerous fish work around the skiff.  You could look up the creek and watch the wakes as schools of a half dozen or so fish would come down the shallow creek and come right to the boat. 

I had a short amount of time to hit the water this evening, so I stayed in the vicinity of the ramp.  I worked across a bay, into a winding creek that I hadn't been to in a few months.  There were several fish working the bends of the creek and the water was skinny enough to see their wakes as they moved around. 

A few years back, it seemed like you could find fish anywhere you stopped your boat.  The past two years were really tough, as the fish just didn't seem to be around in good numbers.  The large amount of redfish I've seen this winter and so far this spring is a great sign.  Things are looking up, and this year looks like it's gonna be a good one.



Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Rolling on the River

March is always a welcome time of year for me.  As the cold of January and February gives way, and the trees begin to bloom, the urge to spend more time outdoors takes over.  Along with warmer weather and daylight savings time, one of my favorite parts of early spring is the shad run in the local rivers.  I've fished several coastal rivers for shad over the last few years, but the Roanoke is always my favorite.  The Roanoke is beautiful during the spring, and the quality of fishing is hard to beat.

A few weeks back I made plans to hit the river with Kristen Cook and Suzanne Craig as soon as the fish arrived in decent numbers.  The weather and the fish came together for us, so I hooked up my skiff, picked up my guests and we made our way to the town of Weldon.  With a lack of rain, the river was lower than normal, and there were a lot of rocks exposed or just below the surface.  I launched the skiff and we carefully made our way around the rocks and started our drift down the river.

A few hundred yards down the river we ran into a few friends anchored up on a school of shad.  We anchored just upstream of them and caught a few fish before moving down river to find another school.  We continued with the standard procedure of drifting down river and anchoring after we hooked into a fish.  The shad travel in groups, so if you hook one you can usually catch many more in the same area.  If a school moves on, then you just drift again until you find more fish.  There are also several spots on the river where fish like to hang out.  Changes in the shoreline or areas around rocks will usually break up the flow of the river and give the fish somewhere to hang. 



For the most part, I threw flashy marabou and estaz flies with a 5wt rod and a sinking line.  Suzanne and Kristen mixed it up between curly tail grubs and spoons, both of which produced.  Towards the end of the day, Suzanne picked up a fly rod for the second time ever.  I talked her through casting a sinking line, and her determination to stick with it paid off in the end. 

We didn't have a triple digit day on fish but we did pretty well.  Kristen and Suzanne are always a blast to have on the boat, and there's no better place to be in March than floating down the Roanoke.