Summer Doldrums

It has been a little while since my last update. Work has been busy and I haven’t had much time to fish. What little time I have had, has not been successful. To be honest, I have been tiring of fighting to catch a handful of tiny schoolies on the fly rod. Earlier in the spring I might’ve been catching mostly small fish, but I’d have 30-50 fish days. Now I’m lucky if I catch five or six in a multi-hour outing. It has been frustrating.

Don’t get me wrong. Any time spent on the water is worthwhile. It would just be nice to hook into some decent fish. I’ve started to do crazy things. To squeak a few more fishing hours into the week I’ve started getting up and getting a couple hours in before work. That requires a 3am-4am wake up though, so it can be rough doing it more than once or twice a week. This week in particular, I’ve joined one of my coworkers on the canal with my spin rod and bike. Cruising the canal, searching for breaking fish and stopping to throw heavy lead jigs has actually been a nice reprieve. However I have already lost about $20 worth of tackle into the merciless ditch just in this week.

Above you can see my setup. I don’t have the storage space for a dedicated canal cruiser so I made a litter bucket pannier with some rod holders. It worked well but does require some refining. I think I am going to build a rod tube onto the other side of the rack that leans back at a 45degree angle rather than vertical as it is now. There are some over hanging branches on the canal service road and my rod was not happy about being slapped by them. Despite not even a tug on my line, it was a great morning. I hadn’t ridden the full length of the service road in years.

Later in the week I went back to the fly rod for the weekly Bear’s Den meetup. The wind was howling on an otherwise hot and muggy night and as much as I wanted to hit the open beaches, we were blown into the shelter provided upstream of an estuary.

The tide was already high when we arrived and over the next few hours, it continued to rise. By the time we left for the night, most of what you can see in the above photo was under water. It was a slow night with most, myself included, catching only a couple small fish. We were eventually driven out by the mosquitoes that did not care how much bug spray we had on. Had the fishing been better, I would’ve toughed it out but it wasn’t worth the punishment those little blood suckers bring.

Hopefully this weekend will bring some better fishing. I plan on getting back into my kayak after a little hiatus. I’ve been experimenting with some other fishing techniques in hopes of getting a real striper on. Trolling a tube an worm seems to be a great way to hook up with a big cow. So far my tube and worm efforts have gone unrewarded, but I plan on getting some juicy live worms and giving it another shot this weekend. Stay tuned.

 

Tight lines as always