A Dozen A Day
I met up with my friend and fishing partner Vic Cutter Thursday morning at Fat Smitty’s Burger Emporium in Discovery Bay for the third day this week of chasing Cutthroat.
We’ve been on a quest lately after having some very slow summer fishing for Salmon and Sea-Run Cutthroat Trout, and finally on Monday and Wednesday of this week we finally found some cooperative fish and landed about 12-15 fish each trip, while missing another 25-30 between us each day, due to “slow hand Luke syndrome”, that has affected me more than Vic . I am a lot older than Vic , by at least three years , so that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it as I seem to keep maintaining the hookup to loss ratio, as evidenced yesterday late afternoon when we got into a school of very large, feeding sea-runs, and I missed seven good takes in a row casting one of my, no-name-so-far, new Atomic Glow patterns, hooked and landed the eighth fish, and missed the ninth before I had to check the fly and make sure I still had a hook?
The hook point was sharp and I was basically dull, continuing to miss many bites for the next couple of hours while drifting just off the shoreline of Indian Island, but not before Vic and I had spent a good part of the day after leaving the Port Townsend Boat launch , looking for Silvers and sea-runs in all the right places; from Kala Point to the entrance of Chimacum Creek, over to Government Cut, fishing both sides, the complete length of the Cut, then along the shore of Marrowstone Island for a few miles, over to Lower Hadlock and Skunk Island… and never saw or touched any kind of fish!
That’s a lot of high speed miles in the Flats Boat, in between fishing known fish producing habitats with nary a tug or a taste of what we were looking for.
One of the very real problems was that everywhere we fished the seaweed and algae was so thick that most of the time we couldn’t fish very effectively, reducing the actual time on the water fishing to a minimal, that was, until near the end of the day, and with a “never say die”, fishing attitude or illness we both have, and the fact that at 5 P.M. it was 76 degrees and hardly any wind on Admiralty Bay, we decided to make a break for it, and give Indian Island a last chance try before admitting defeat.
The kind of luck we were having for most of the day seemed to be hanging with us as we drifted and made cast after cast into the ideal cutthroat fishing shoreline we had fished very successfully in the past , and still not a bite or even a sighting of a feeding fish or two?
One of the great things about casting from the bow of a Florida Flats Boat is that you get to see into the water when the light is right, and you suddenly add 10-20 feet to your casting distance, adding to your confidence and opportunity to reach fish , if there’s fish to reach.
Just about the time I was thinking of throwing in the towel, or the rod(?), I had stopped stripping the fly as it neared the boat, and as it sunk down into the rocks below in about 5 feet of water, three or four large cutthroat came out of nowhere and tried to inhale the fly while I instinctively pulled it away from them, missing the first of many cutthroat chasing our
flies right up to the boat for the next two hours!
Once we figured out the fish were lying in the holes and pockets amongst the small rocks and boulders, we would cast and let our flies sink long enough to get in the fish’s field of vision , but not too long to hookup in the rocks, at least not every cast!
We found that we had to keep switching fly patterns to keep the bite alive, at least until we saw a group of fish tearing through a school of some kind of baitfish, and that’s when I missed eight out of nine bites casting right to the edge of the feeding frenzy with one my new Atomic Glow flies while Vic hooked and missed, and hooked and landed fish on one of his small baitfish patterns.
When the fishing slowed down a bit, Vic switched to a full sinking line and immediately started getting hits, misses, and fish on base while I stuck to the floating line with a little less success that didn’t seem to matter that much, as we were both getting and missing, and landing fish “our way”, to keep on doing what we were doing.
Along with the excellent fishing was the show of fish catapulting out of the water for nearly the whole time we were fishing , including seeing 4 of 5 fish that we both agreed had to be in the 20+ inch range, plus too many to count in the 12-18 inch size, often within casting range.
Finally, after 2-2 1/2 hours of action, we figured the fish finally moved on as the outgoing current, our outgoing energy, along with the evening light, were all changing, and the day was done.
As we hurtled across the Bay heading to the Marina, Vic yelled above the quiet roar of the engine, “ we need to do something about our hookup to fish landed ratio”. Boy howdy, he’s right, I thought, when we figured we had probably missed at least 30-40 good bites each, and landed maybe 15 very fat fish between us, all in the 12-16 inch range, and surprisingly, neither one of us got into one of the trophy cutthroat we had seen and cast to.
As most fishermen know, there is nothing like seeing Moby Fish to keep you coming back for more, and after today’s adventure, we know he’s still out there!
Until we fish again.
August 30, 2019
Post-Fish Update
Jeff Delia