Josenhans Fly Fishing Blog

Kathi Wilmoth with a skinny-water rock

The other day, Dave and Kathi Wilmoth met me early at Somers Cove for the 30 minute boat ride to one of my favorite topwater holes. Upon arrival, we found very clear water but no current movement. In fact, it was dead low tide. Casting Stillwater poppers, Kathi was the first to connect with a hard strike that occurred right in front of her. I believe it was her first rockfish on a surface lure. A few minutes later another explosion and Kathi had her first “keeper” on a popper as we saved that one for the pan. Dave was casting the larger Stillwater without a strike so I had him switch-over to the Smack-it Jr like Kathi was using.  The sun was fast getting bright and hot, so after a brief lull I asked Kathi to switch to a shad tail. Almost immediately she was hooked into something taking drag. After a brief but game effort a 22 inch striper came over the side. Nice fish Kathi! Dave switched to a shad and he started to get in on the action as well. Not bad considering we were sitting in three feet of slack water (One of these mornings the conditions are going to be perfect and this shallow bite is going to be off the charts!)

Brown Pelican nesting ground

From where we sat I could see that the bay was practically flat calm. We headed out to try for some blues. For an hour they did not disappoint. Dave caught several 18 to 20 inch hard fighting blues, mixed in with the occasional rockfish. I landed a very big croaker while prospecting for bottom dwellers. Fish were stacked up on the fish finder, and while we were having some decent action, I really thought we could have been doing a lot better. I guess fish don’t constantly eat like I do. Anyway, it was a good morning, Dave and Kathi both caught some nice fish and we finished off the day with a nice lunch at Tangier Island, with a side trip to a Brown Pelican nesting ground. While snapping pictures of the pelicans it would have been easy to imagine that we were fishing in Florida.