Martha's Vineyard part 2

Ah there's a nice photo of a Martha's Vineyard pond. Doesn't that look so nice? That's where I was in September, hanging out.

So we left off the last post with an update on what happened when we arrived. The next day we tried to go out in the powerboat, but the waves were too big and Nantucket Sound was too dangerous. No other boats were out. It was spooky. So we headed back in. Disappointing, but better safe than sorry.

I don't 100% remember how it got suggested, but I ended up taking out our host's fishing kayak. He had a 14 foot Wilderness Systems Tarpon. It was a nice boat. I'm a huge kayak guy. It was my first time on a fishing kayak. It looked something like this.

So, you sit on top of the boat and use a paddle. It doesn't have the foot pedal things. And then there's the rod holder in the middle. So I put my life jacket on (or you can call it a PDF {personal flotation device} if you want to get fancy, put my kayaking gloves on (I can't kayak/canoe/raft without wearing NRS boaters gloves, put my paddling booties on (I'm still wearing some old nasty NRS booties and I ended up losing my paddling socks but that's a different story), put my fishing pack in the back, grabbed a couple beers and a water, and launched.

My fly rod was in the rod holder with a sinking line and a small olive and white clouser minnow. The clouser minnow might be the best known saltwater fly ever made. It's the equivalent of the black woolly bugger for freshwater fishing. This is what it looks like -

It is such a fishy fly. I caught some crazy fish in Hawaii with it. It's a good go to fly for anywhere in the world pretty much.

I was trying to find the birds. See, the birds follow the bait. Where's there's birds there's bait. And where there's bait there's probably bigger fish that we're trying to catch. So I paddled out towards the open water where the birds had been. And by this point I'm trolling. Which means that I let a lot of line out and sort of trail it behind me as I paddle along. I let out probably 80 feet of line or so. And with the sinking action, the fly is riding somewhere below the surface. I probably kind of looked like these dudes.

And lo and behold I hooked up with a bluefish. And then I caught a bunch more striped bass and bluefish. The biggest striper was 23 inches. It was awesome. It was some of the most fun I've had this summer. I didn't keep any fish, but next time I might keep some bluefish, because Rick says he has a smoker and would use the smoker for them.