Hey all you saltwater fly fishing enthusiasts out there – I think that I mentioned recently a day when we found the sea bass on the surface for an extended period of time and had loads of fun casting to them. Well, I did NOT have a GoPro set up, but at one point it was so crazy that I held my iPhone in my right hand and tried to roll cast 15 ft with my left hand. My casting was terrible and awkward so It took a few casts but even at such close range, the sea bass came to the fly quite nicely.
This short video is but a tiny glimpse into the wild action that day, the BEST I have experienced in the last several years. Although this video does not show it, the bass sometimes jumped out of the water and came back down to crush the fly as they re-entered! I’m not sure if it shows in this video but I get very excited at times like this.
And don’t count on the fishing being like this all the time, because the last five days I fished, the sea bass were totally stuffed with little shrimp and other unidentifiable matter and we had a very difficult time catching a few of these fine fish on our bait-fish fly imitations. Such is often the case fly fishing the ocean, and easy-catching one day can transition into VERY challenging fishing the next.
Have fun and get out there if you can.
Jay Nicholas, August 2014
I hope you had some poppers rigged up.
Did you figure out what they were feeding on? I’ve seen them on top like but never really figured out what they were boiling on. Krill? Crab spawn? Jellies?
If you’re interested here’s a video where I fished poppers (both with and without a hook) for rockfish boiling like that.
https://vimeo.com/67548697