Striper Sojourn

It’s likely that many of our readers have taken fishing trips during their angling life. An excursion to a faraway place, perhaps to pursue a species that we don’t normally angle for, or an eagerly anticipated visit somewhere to fish once a year. After all, that’s what makes fly fishing exciting – using the skills that you’ve developed to catch different fish in different places. 

For myself, the Farmington River in Connecticut and Salmon River in New York have become nearly annual destinations to test my abilities. Montana has been a frequent angling stop through the years as well, though not nearly as often as I would like. Recently however, getting out to the Massachusetts coast in the pursuit of striped bass and false albacore has gotten on the schedule, for at least a trip or two a season.

I’m generally intimidated by the ocean – (yeah, I’ve probably watched JAWS too many times) as its power and denizens of the deep are a source of amazement, but the attraction is overpowering – big water means big fish, and a lot of them at times. The action can be “hot” as these tremendous fish will test your physical capability, your casting ability, and your equipment, all at the same time. In short, fly fishing for stripers can be some of the best fishing you’ll ever have in your life.

It’s not all rainbows and lollipops though. As in most fly fishing scenarios, the effects of weather play a huge role in success or failure. A colder-than-normal spring might delay the northward migration of the larger stripers up the coast, or gusting wind could make casting your fly an especially dangerous event. The flies for stripers tend to be big and heavy, so an errant, wind-aided cast that lodges a bar-belled Clouser in to your arm, shoulder, back, head, etc. can be particularly damaging. Never mind what your shoulder feels like by the end of several days of striper fishing.

If the wind moderates and the weather cooperates however, the angling might be … oh, what is the word … MAGICAL. After missing the last couple of years due to Covid, a trip to the coast this spring was in the offing. My association with stripers and albies began when my good friends Matt and Jason invited me to come along on a striper trip years ago. It was tremendous and more than enough to hook me on future excursions to the salt. Their experience with stripers and albies is more extensive, as they live closer and can get out to the Cape or Islands with ease.

Chuck Degray of North Country Fly Shop joined us on this trip as well, and while he had pursued stripers along the coast of Rhode Island years ago, he hadn’t been to the Cape for them before. There was another reason for expanding our group to four anglers though. Matt planted the seed a year ago. “We should do the Cheeky next year!” he exclaimed in a rant, and that was all it took for the wheels to start turning …

The Cheeky Schoolie Tournament is a one day, fly fishing only, wading only, catch-and-release tournament held each of the last eleven Mays. Created to raise money and awareness for striped bass, it seems to have become a much-anticipated event on the schedule of many New England (and from other more distant places) fly fishers. Everyone wants to perform well in the tournament, but there definitely seemed to be a supportive current (no pun intended) running through the proceedings that day – it was a fun time.

Two hundred seventy-five teams of two anglers each that are restricted to fishing Cape Cod only (from the canal to Provincetown) could have made for quite a competitive environment, but there seemed to be plenty of room for everyone. The rules were fairly simple. In addition to those mentioned above, anglers submitted measurements of their top four fish (images too, if your overall score was deemed close enough to the top of the leaderboard) caught and released from 5:30 AM to 4 PM. Measured fish had to be at least 20” in length, and fish were to be kept wet prior to release – no “beaching” of fish. Last year’s winning team had a total of 100” of stripers from their four submissions.

The team aspect of the competition really materialized when it came time to actually measure a worthy fish. Controlling a 20+” striper is no easy feat in the first place, so doing this and documenting it for the tournament committee is most definitely a two-person job. Thanks to Matt’s advance scouting, we were able to get in to fish at each location that we tried, and the angling can only be considered exceptional. We estimated that we caught and released somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 – 80 stripers that day, with Jason catching the largest (27”) fish.

Matt and Jason’s entries measured out at 96.5”, a more than respectable score, good for 37^th place (the winning team scored 116”). Chuck and I turned in a grand total of 88.25”, putting us at 52^nd out of 275 teams in the competition. The weather generally cooperated that day and the stripers were exceptionally accommodating for many of the anglers in the tournament. But, that was only the beginning of our striper sojourn – the Vineyard was next.

Martha’s Vineyard

Exhausted from tourney day, there was no rest for the wicked as we moved our base of angling operations to beautiful Martha’s Vineyard for a couple of days. The plan called for wade fishing some areas that we have in the past, as well as a couple spots that Matt and Jason had fished on other trips to the island. We also had two boat trips scheduled with Vineyard guide Jamie Boyle, probably the top fly fishing guide on the island for stripers, blues and albies.

While the wade fishing at the various locations was again very good (a bunch of schoolies, but Matt and Chuck both caught and released fish in the upper 20″ size in these sessions) the highlight of our island adventure was going on the boat with Jamie. His professional approach and easy going attitude (especially when dealing with our group) helped us have great days on the water, chasing larger fish on different fly patterns. He’ll probably need heavy duty counseling after fishing with us for two days …

While we were primarily using Clousers and Deceivers when wade fishing, imitating bait fish or sand eels, Jamie had us chucking squid patterns above and below the surface out on the boat. The squid are in heavy right now in the deeper waters off the coast of the Cape and Islands, and the stripers know it. Based on what we saw (imagine squid leaping out of the water to escape a pack of predatory fish – we saw this multiple times) and caught, squid are undoubtedly a favorite prey for stripers.

Fishing the edges of powerful rip currents around the island, the action was almost non-stop for all four of us, as we took turns casting to, hooking, and with Jamie’s help, releasing primarily large stripers. Cast, perhaps put in a mend, let it sink if you have the sinking line, pop it like it’s hot if you’re on top, strip fast and hold on when the fish hits. We repeated this routine – A LOT.

It was amazing, and reminded me of musical chairs, as we moved around the boat, dodging and weaving to stay out of the way of an angler or two hooked up with an angry fish, determined to stay away from the boat. It was kind of like watching a Three Stooges short, except there were four of us – Moe, Larry, Curly and Shemp, sometimes tangled up in fly line.

We landed and released a lot of fish over the course of the two days with Jamie – who knows the number, as our pace was too furious to keep track of. While the fishing was tremendous, the camaraderie was perhaps better – jokes and one liners proliferated (many courtesy of Matt), for seemingly four days straight, keeping all of us in stitches and the mood light. It’s pretty hard to get worked up catching fish all day, for four days in a row, in beautiful places.