Todd Corayer
Special to Outdoor Enthusiast Lifestyle MagazineEven when fishing gets complicated Capt. Rene Letourneau finds the fish
Fishing and weather can be complicated.
In the wake of a lethargic swirling post-cyclone tropical whatever, waters have largely cleared and the fishing has finally turned back on. Stripers, blues, sea bass, scup, fluke and racing hardtails are feeding in the face of changing waters and shorter days. From The Sakonnet to Watch Hill, there are striped bass and blues to fight with spinning gear or on the fly but the best lure just might be a couple of characters.
Captain Jerry Sparks Guides Us Through the Cinder Worms
It’s one of the most exciting, challenging, rewarding and frustrating fishing events of our striper season: the cinder worm hatch. Salt ponds with dark mud bottoms and skinny water corners where strong tides drain edges will warm with longer days and if all conditions align, really turn on in a short window of stellar fishing. To be clear, the hatch is not a hatch at all, but an emergence of worms spawning on the surface. Their undulating dances, as old as millenia, draw striped bass into a feeding frenzy from late afternoons to twilight and when conditions are ideal, the craziness can go on all night right until sunrise, which may be why some fishermen talk about getting into the worms on a morning bite.
Niagara Falls, a Super Swamper & Stop Screwing with our 2nd Amendment
Slowly I turned, to watch the spinning rod handle as microns of cork were sanded off a fly rod under construction. The project began a few weeks ago, a 9’ 9 weight St. Croix IV and has been turning on Steve Babcock’s Super Swamper homemade lathe. The SC IV is a beautiful, unfortunately discontinued blank now benefiting from a unique cork handle which fits my hand perfectly in a Full Wells style and should provide real backbone when fighting one of those big stripers on the fly like I have never caught.
