Mysterious and beautiful, False Dawn is the haunting transition between the ink of night and the birth of day. From the east, a dreamlike reddish glow paints the zodiac. Typically arriving an hour before sunrise. Birds have yet to fly. Air temperatures are rock bottom. And if you have been fishing all night for striped bass, this is last call. With dawn the fishing will die.
Did I already do this damn post? Keep thinking I did, but I can’t find it on the site. Well, no harm done.
On the net some time ago, I came across this Nirvana fly reel and immediately like it. The website was Moonlit Fly Fishing Came in two sizes and was called a vintage “click” pawl reel. Which is exactly what it is. Not real expensive. Although it has crept up in price since I got it, but I believe they offer a discount coupon. Check it out.
I have two of the 4/6 size reels. (more on that fiasco in a minute) Front and back plates are solid – not ventilated. Has a brass reel foot, line guard, and center screw. Nice touch. Frame 3.5″ tall, 1′ wide. Weight 7.20 0unces with 5wt line & backing. Great “click” on the line out. More than adequate drag. Simple construction, too. Reversible. Little to go wrong. And they look killer on my vintage Winston glass rods. In fact I used one to do the cover for Estuary Magazine.
Why do I have two? Okay I goofed. At one point I was certain I had lost the first reel, combed the house for days. Man, I was bummed; I really liked the thing. So eventually I broken down and got a replacement. Don’t you know two weeks later I found the original reel under my truck’s seat! Oh well, life goes on.
(PS I hear this same reel is offered under a different name by a different vendor.)
Back in 1981 Nick Lyons published Caddisflies by Gary La Fontaine. It was then and is still today the definitive angling text on the subject. A large format book of 8.5″ x 11″ and over 300 pages, it is well written, highly informative and well-illustrated by Harvey Eckert. And in today’s collectible book market brings about $75.
Since the earliest days, fly-fishing has been mainly focused on mayflies. In fact, it’s fair to say that when it comes to aquatic macroinvertebrates, mayflies are the gold standard that rules our reference books and our fly tying. Gary’s book was a wakeup call. It showed the angling world that caddisflies were every bit as important as mayflies. And he did it in an exhaustive way, leaving no loose ends, covering hatches, tying, fishing, and entomology. (ps, those are my caddis pupae flies sprinkled over the jacket.)
After Caddisflies, Gary’s wrote three additional books The Dry Fly: New Angles in 1990, Trout Flies: Proven Patterns, 1993 and then Flyfishing Mountain Lakes in 1996. And I believe, he was also planning a book on blue-winged olives (BWOs), one of the most common and wide-spread hatches on our trout waters. Unfortunately Gary contracted Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and passed in January 2002, at age 56. Quite a loss.
Recently I came across an old book I hadn’t seen in years – The Complete Book of Weakfishing by Henry Lyman and Frank Woolner. Published in 1959, these writers are two of the finest anglers to every pickup a pen. I meet Henry Lyman years back in the offices of Salt Water Sportsman Magazine. Unfortunately never had a chance to meet Frank Woolner, although I wrote story about him for Fly Fishing in Saltwater Magazine back n 1996. It was entitled Von Woolner’s Fly Box. I’ll let you discover why.
And as you would expect, they do a good job here covering weakfish and their kissing cousins – the spotted seatrout, the silver seatrout and the sand trout – from Florida to New England. And they do so with a variety of gear including fly rods! Yes Frank was one of first writers to realize the value of a fly rod on the coast.
Stripers wintering over in New England? Yes, it’s something every veteran angler realizes. Each year a percentage of striped bass elect to hang out in our waters. Why? Well, large breeder bass, who spent their summer here, occasionally opt to skip a year, forgoing the long trip back to Chesapeake Bay or the Hudson. They are just taking a damn break. Typically, these fish simply seek refuge where waters temperatures are bit warmer. What kind of water temperature? Striped bass are still a bit active at 45 degrees, but my guess is anything that reaches into the 30s is trouble. Where do they find decent temperatures? In deeper water either offshore or in a river. And staying north for the winter leaves them in a perfect position to be nearby during the herring runs of early spring.
An Early March Striper in New England
Smaller striped may stay too, but they are also more likely to get trapped in places by the onset of a fast approaching winter. In may be in a river, a power plant outflow. Or a salt pond, whose mouth suddenly closed in the late fall.
