Chub fishing tenkara style. I was back on the water pursuing the elusive big chub. The most abundant insects present where blue damselflies with here and there a lot mayfly. During the assembly of the fly rod I noticed to my sheer horror that the flyreel was not present in my tackle bag. Adapt and overcome was the motto. I tied a long piece of tippet at the hook keeper and started fishing Tenkara style.
I actually caught a little chub by tossing a nymph with a strike indicator at the pool I was fishing. Tenkara fishing only yielded one small chub so I left in search of a better location . Action was slow so the more sheltered forest spots upstream where on my mind. Dace and small roach where cooperating albeit smaller fish. I looked for the reel back home but it was not to be found and probably lost out in the field … bummer.
Most fisherman probably have a certain fish species they want to catch that seems to be out of reach because of various reasons. A species that was on my wish list was the Striped bass. I had red many books about the subject and roamed forums about this fish species for information. Locations like Martha’s Vineyard, Montauk, Rhode Island and Massechussets came to mind.
The plan
I did not have a plan to pursue my dream untill I came into contact with Jeremy Cameron of Maine. Jeremy did some IT work for the Everglades Angler flyshop I frequented in Naples Florida. Jeremy ran the Flies-and-Fins website and as a New England local he pointed me in the right way. My first thoughts where to visit Massachussets but with some intervetion from Jeremy it became Rhode Island.
Travel
Plans where finalized and off I went on a flight to Boston with a short stopover in Iceland. From Boston South Station I took the Amtrak Northeast Regional to my final destination in Rhode Island. Just about midnight I arrived at a small train station in South county and with the last charge of my mobile phone I ordered the only cab in town.
Confusion
The late arrival worried me and when I came to a small hotel at the beach confusion set in. The hotel all dark with loads of people outside in the parking lot. In the middle of all this confusion a girl came up to me and told me that crowds where attending her wedding party. At my request she pointed me out to the appartment of the caretakers. Luckily they answered the door and gave me the keys to my room. After all the planes, trains and automobiles I was as drained so I dumped my stuff in my room and fell asleep in no time. The next morning at check in I was asked if I had heard anything of the racket from the other night. The cops had to come out twice to restore the peace but I was out fishing for stripers in dreamland.
The fishing
It was as hot in Rhode Island as in Florida so not what I had expected. In the first week of my stay I received the grand tour of Rhode Island by Jeremy when we fished various locations from foot and from the boat. The first striped bass came from a set of rockpiles where fish started hitting our flies when the tide began to run. I got a taste of fishing the breachways to the saltwater marshes and the open coast. The open beach was epic as we had the luck to run into a bluefish blitz with the waves, diving birds and the whole lot that makes this fishing so addicting. An eyeopener was the sight fishing for striped bass in the shallows at one of the barrier island, I always thought that was only done in southern climes.
Striped bass
Second week
The second week as my unguided week and so I explored the beach and the nearby bay on foot. I spend a lot of time on the beach slowly learning how to find the fish and when to fish for them . It went so far that I was on the beach untill midnight catching stripers in the moonlight. I even ran into one of the Flies-and-Fins forum guys while fishing the bay when we both hooked into large stripers.
Striped bass
Equipment
For the fishing I used 9-weight rods and fished with an intermediate line to fish through the waves. Besides the obvious clouser minnows I used several flies I sourced from an auction at the Stripers-online Surftalk forum. My most favourite pattern where surely the flatwing patterns I had sourced from the auction, light to cast and still having a full profile. With the risk of lower temperatures occuring any time I had off course waders with me.
Conclusion
My time in Rhode Island was fantastic. I sampled all the environments where one could expect to find stripers with the exception maybe of freshwater. The Mission to catch stripers was accomlished. While travelling home I vowed to visit Rhode Island again in the future.
Chub day … the wind messed up many of my presentations so the catch rate was quite low today. Ever heard of that story of the big one whom got away … well it did by breaking my tippet. The dry fly fishing did not go as plan and nymphing did not work at first either … increasing the nymph size resulted in hookups. The big boys are present but with the open landscape and high banks very tough to approach … scared most fish away. Plan B to go after the trout failed as I spend too much time on the chub and the ever increasing wind and clouds killed off the mayfly action. Learned a few things while chub fishing today which should come in handy next session.
That sudden heat had to come with a price = thunderstorms. Luckily it came at the end of my fishing session. It poured for a while but I was already safely at the pub.
The rare perch (in my stream) chased a dace I had caught on the dry fly. I switched to a streamer and made a few exploratory casts in the general area where I had seen the perch. Found the perch and this time it chased the streamer, got the fish. Missed two trout in the afternoon but hooked a good one just before the rains started.
Friday cold and rain, today hot and sunny. Lots of mayflies about but not a lot of surface feeding fish. Checked out the chub haunts and only found fish at a few spots. No luck catching the big ones but happy I spotted a few very decent fish. Gonna try again when the weather is warmer and more stable.
With the improving weather I visited my chub hotspot, not hot yet. Tried several spots at different rivers but I guess still to early. I could only muster small roach and chub on most stretches. Even the removed weir was void of big fish. At the newly “restored” section of the feeder stream I noticed a lot of surface activity and an abundance of mayflies.
Used a dry fly to see what was hitting but it turned out to be small bleak instead of the hoped chub. My last option was to fish the nymph and that brought a somewhat larger chub to hand. With the weather getting warmer and mayflies abundant next weekend could be interesting.
I once again visited the Harz mountains, a tad early in the season. The organizer of this trip had set the date to May 2nd. probably forgetting the fact that the 1st of May was a public holiday in Germany = crowds. The other drawback this year was the fact that a cold snap was forecast with the possibility of snow and off course low temperatures.
I had hoped to toss dry flies with the cane rod to rising brown trout but with the cold weather I thought that nymphing would be the only viable option to catch fish. Fishing was not always easy and sizewise I did not get into any large fish but on a positive note we checked out some spots we had not visited in all those years we visited this area.
My best fishing spot turned out to be the very industrial section of the river along a quarry where chalk was produced, noisy and dusty as hell but amazingly a lot of grayling in that section. The mining and heavy industry of today and the past had sure left enought traces in the landscape. If you could collect all the iron hardware dumped in the river you could make a pretty penny.
The trip lasted four days with the first day being the warmest. After that the temps plummeted and finally light snow and hail fell with temperatures close to freezing. Despite the weather fish where still active now and then so it was not that bad afterall. Wished I could have stayed a bit longer as the trout became active in the afternoon and some fish where rising.
It was quite cold day with rain in the afternoon and again very windy. The morning was sort of ok and I could spot some dace in the surface and drop a F-fly in their path resulting in a few hookups. I could not spot any trout and nymphing yielded only a small roach.
As I received good intel on the whereabouts of trout I tried the spot I was told about in the late afternoon when the weather had calmed and the rain had stopped. The first trout spotted me first and took off. Trout nr. 2 was rising a few times under the bank so I knew the location of the fish. Casting from shore was impossible due to trees and shrubs so I had to enter the water. I carefully positioned myself for the cast and dropped the dry fly in the current letting it drift towards the spot where I suspected the trout was. The trout nailed the dry fly hard and after several jumps I could land the last fish of the day.
Quite a different picture than last week as the temperature had dropped 10 degrees and it was raining most of the day. Tried nymphing in the village but got hardly any bites, also could not spot the fish like I did last week. Two small dace where all I could muster and despite trying several locations I could not get the fish to bite.
Wind and rain chased me off the open spots into the woods but also had no luck there. I ran across the stocking crew from the fishing club and helped them with stocking fingerling brown trout in some of the sheltered shallow section in the forest.
Since the fishing was not that great the only thing left to do was to get dinner at the pub. As it was a tad chilly and wet outside the fireplace was lit, at least I could dry out. On the menu today aspergus cream soup, parmesano burger and cherry cake …
There should be less rain tomorrow so I am going to try again and see if I can get some better fish to the surface.
