I have been pretty busy this week guiding mostly striper fishing trips and have had excellent to great fishing. In fact on Monday morning the clients took the time to count the fish that they caught and got over 100. Most of them are small but I think that a few larger fish are showing up on each rising tide. My slowest trip of the last several days was an afternoon trip from 2 to 5 and the clients caught maybe 15 fish. Not to shabby given the time of day and tide.
In spite of the fact that the river is running brown tannin stained water well out into the salt water there are a good number of stripers to be caught. One unusual feature is that there is so much water flowing out of the river that the incoming tide does not really run in but rather the river simply fills up with more brown water instead of a rush of cool green sea water. Different to be sure and it has impacted the color preference of the fish for flies. For the last few days pure white has been the clear winner over every other pattern.
I have helped my neighbors put on a kids fishing event in memory of their son for the last three years. Each year the weather does not cooperate. We even moved it from May to June to try and get better conditions. But Saturday was cold and raining just like the last three times we put it on. The only real difference this time was that the river was definitely at flood stage. The beach at the park had completely disappeared and the water was up in the trees. Here is a picture of a few kids lined up along the shore of Seven Tree Pond in Union trying their luck.
