{Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders} Re: A Good Day Striper Fishing

That is amazing!  My first striper was in high school on the susquehanna just below the conowingo dam. I was wading and had a very light spinning rod going after smallies. The striper surprised me and took me on a bit of a swim. It was 31 inches and just one, but enough to make stripers my favorite fish ever since. Thanks for sharing those great pictures.

I saw in another post in here that DNR suspects the warmer winter meant more stripers wintered  in the bay so more were caught by commercial fisherman hence fewer are around for us to pursue in the Potomac this spring.  Your success in the Susquehanna makes me question this theory. I suspect far more go to the flats to spawn than come here on average, (do any come here to actually spawn or just feast on herring?) but I'm wondering now if the flats are seeing fewer stripers this year too.  Do you happen to know?

Congrats, again, and now I really really want to get back to the Susquehanna soon! 

On Thursday, April 19, 2012 1:37:28 AM UTC-4, Jereme Thaxton wrote:

With spring in full swing, a couple weeks ago I got the urge to do some striper fishing and I wanted to check out the Susquehanna Flats.  So, I tried to soak up as much fly shop knowledge, including talking to Captain Russ Wilkinson (a well known fly/light tackle guide) about streamer patterns and notorious striper hideouts.  With all the kayak chatter, I also recently picked up a new inflatable kayak and so I was wanting to take that out for a spin as well.  I was starting to realize that a sit on top or inflatable kayak was more stable and safe than my hard boat (even with a spray skirt).  So, due to my limited space I opted for the Advanced Elements Straightedge inflatable, it will track in flatwater and handle class III's so I was pretty excited about it's versatility.  

Russ's input was spot on, he gave me a couple locations as a starting point and then from there I was able to get in the general location to find the fish.  Launched the kayak this morning about 6:30 AM and pulled it off about 5:30 PM, landed 34 stripers total, six were in the 27-35 inch range and the majority in the 17-24 inch range (the 35 incher is the last photo).   A six inch blue/white half and half was my favorite, and Russ mentioned bunker patterns are also popular as well.  Another angler on the water had success on olive/white deceivers.  Depth was aprox. 7-10 feet, and I liked to strip it deep and fast. 

A lot of the guys in the saltwater boats using conventional tackle would come by and ask what I was doing special, I was like 'start using a fly rod and fish from a yak!'  Seriously though, I am on cloud 9 right now and feel pretty lucky as I met some guys who didn't catch a fish, I didn't either the day before.  To me there is something special about catching big fish on a hand-tied fly, a home-made rod and out of a simple object like a kayak.  I can't wait to do it again but I will need a couple days to recover as it took a lot out of me.

-Jereme

PS, just to head off any speculation, the fish were out of the water at most a couple seconds for the photos, thanks to my GoPro I was able to do it pretty quickly in order to get them back into the water unharmed.  These are spawning fish so I tried to keep that in mind when handling them and urge others to do so as well.  

 

 

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