Mike Mathias

Today I decided to fish an area I had not fished for a couple of years.

I arrived at about 9:30 am. The wind was fairly calm and the sun was bright.

As I walked to where I wanted to fish, I noticed there was bait everywhere.

The tide was coming in and we were about 3 hours from high tide. My plan was to fish the upstream side of a bridge, drifting clousers under the bridge to see if anyone was home.

I tied on an olive/white clouser and made my first cast, mending the line in order to let the fly sink in the swift current. As the fly drifted toward the rip created by the bridge piling a 14 inch striper struck the fly with the ferocity of a 15 pounder.

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What a way to start the day! Little did I know what was to come as I released this bright clean fish.

​I continued to drift the flies under the bridge with the same results. Nearly every drift produced a striper of some size. At 12:30 as the slack high approached, I had caught 31 fish and had dropped just 3 fish in 2.5 hours of fishing

Most of these stripers were clean and bright with no sea lice. The smallest fish being about 11" and the largest fish being about 22'' which did have sea lice.

As the current slowed so did the fishing. Eventually I decided to leave and try another spot in the same area, overjoyed with the success I already had this morning.

I fished at this new location for about 1 hour, seeing no bait, and not getting a bump from any fish, I decided to return to my original location to catch the outgoing tide.

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