Rockfish and Redfish

I had the pleasure of taking long time friend Todd Spangler out for a shot at his first striped bass on fly.  Todd and I have fished together several times but he just recently became serious about fly fishing.  He purchased a new 7wt rod and reel a month before, but had not broken it in on a fish yet.  The lower roanoke was still holding good numbers of stripers, so we set a date and went after them.

I left the house around 4am and picked Todd up an hour later as we made the drive North towards the Roanoke.  We got on the river around 7am and made the run to a secret little spot that the stripers love to hang at.  The depth finder quickly showed us what I was hoping for...a bunch of stripers hanging below the boat.  We got the boat in position and I explained to Todd where to cast, how long to let the line sink and how to strip the fly back in for a strike. 

Todd made a great first cast towards the fish and started counting down as the fly sank into the depths below.  Todd wasted no time hooking up on a striped bass about 3 strips into the retrieve of the first cast.  The rod doubled over, and I could tell from the smile on his face that he was gonna have a great morning.

Over the next few hours we would catch a handful of fish and then reposition again when the fish moved away from us.  It wasn't as red hot as I've seen it before, but we still had an awesome morning.  Todd ended up catching around 30 striped bass on flies he tied himself...not bad for his first real fly fishing trip.  I caught a few too, and we ended up bringing about 75 fish to the boat to be released.  We took a few quick hero shots, but released most of the fish while they were still in the water, allowing them to recover quickly without being exposed to the warm air temps.  I can safely say that Todd is a fly fishing addict now, and I know we'll have many more exciting trips in our future.

The following day I had the pleasure of taking Trevor Devine out on a trip looking for redfish on fly.  Trevor lives outside of Charlotte, where he normally chases trout and carp on the fly rod.  He was hoping to get a little saltwater action while he was down.  Trevor had not caught a red before, so we set out to put him on one.  We dropped the boat in at low tide, and made a run to a good spot for fish on low water. 

We pushed around for a while and started running into reds.  It was mid day and the water was very shallow so most of the fish spooked before we had an opportunity to cast to them.  We ended up in one small bay that had around 75 redfish, with the majority of them being 28"-32"s...there were some really nice fish in there.  Unfortunately most of them were very spooky in the shallow water and they were not in the mood to eat for us.  It was an awesome sight, watching dozens of big reds zoom around the flat, some bumping into the boat as they tried to escape...I even saw one pair of reds run head on into each other. 

As the tide came in, we moved to another spot that held a good number of redfish.  With a bit deeper water, they were tough to see, but they were a lot less spooky.  Trevor ended up hooking into his first and second redfish on fly while we fished this section of water.  I had a great time fishing with him, and was glad to see his persistence pay off.  Nice job Trevor!