Quick Strike Podcast: Catching Striped Bass On The Run, From Shore Is Easier Than You Think

Surf fishing and fly fishing are both challenging, so it’s easy to assume that combining the two would be the ultimate test of the rods. But the reality is that it’s a lot less daunting than many people think. People who live within range of migrating striped bass on both coasts have the perfect targets to challenge the idea that hitting the surf, bay, or dock with a fly rod and no boat requires a miracle to succeed. It doesn’t. Striped bass feed very close to shore, and if you can grasp a few key concepts about what to cast and where to put your feet, the learning curve is shorter than you might think.

My friend and fellow Northeastern writer, Mike Carr, prefers to catch all of his stripers on the fly. To say he is passionate about the hunt is an understatement, and while he spends time on boats, he devotes much of his energy to solo foot missions in the fall. I recently had Carr out on the Quick Strike Podcastand his insights, gained through years of trial and error, will demystify the sport and put saltwater stripers within your reach, whether you’re a seasoned angler or ready for a new challenge.

The outfit

It’s easier to find the perfect fly setup when you’re fishing on foot than when you’re using a boat. You might think it’s the other way around, but if you can race around the entire bay, you could end up in 30 feet of water and then a few minutes later in 5 feet. You could encounter giant bass that want huge flies and then change to school-sized fish. This might mean you want to have different weights of rods and lines to be most effective, but your shoreline limitations make gear selection much easier.

“If you have a 9 foot, 9 weight rod and an intermediate line, then you can’t go wrong,” Carr says. “You can use it on the beach, in the bay, on the pier. As long as you know how to tie a leader to a fly, that combination will help you.”

Since you will be using subsurface flies most of the time, a intermediate linethat sinks slowly is ideal. From the shore you are usually fishing in shallow water, so a heavier sinking line would sink too quickly. But even surface patterns such as poppers and Gurgling can be fished with an intermediate line by switching to an 8- to 9-foot line leader so that the belly that is created when the fly line sinks does not pull the surface fly down. Sinking patterns on the other hand can be fished on a shorter leader so that the sinking fly line pulls them down quicker.

While you don’t need an ultra-high-end reel for stripers, you do want one with a sealed drag. Fishing in the surf and piers means your reel will be getting wet and submerged in saltwater, so it’s important to keep the inside of the reel dry. Lamson Liquid is a good choice and very affordable for a closed reel.

Get control

Perhaps the most crucial piece of equipment for saltwater flight missions is a comic strip basketThese come in different configurations or you can make your ownbut their function remains the same. A stripping basket is worn on a belt around your waist and as you reel in your fly it collects all of your loose line. Good stripping baskets have pegs on the bottom of the basin which help prevent coiling and tangling. While it may take some practice to get comfortable stripping in the basket without even thinking about it, it is far less frustrating than the alternative.

“Fly fishing in the ocean surf is already a challenge,” Carr says. “You’re dealing with wind and waves. If you don’t have a stripper, all the loose line that accumulates at your feet gets tangled up quickly. You spend most of your day constantly untangling tangles.”

Indispensable flies

The last thing you want when patrolling a beach or sod bank is to carry too much gear. There’s simply no need to carry multiple fly boxes full of patterns, because again, the constraints of being shorebound allow you to be minimalist. Most of the time, you’ll be making casts that are no more than 30 feet. You’ll also be fishing in shallow water, and while there are exceptions, most of the baits that the fish in your range will be chasing will be small. This allows Carr to confidently approach any situation with three key flies.

“I need Clouser-little fish in different sizes, and I rarely tie them in anything other than olive green over white or yellow green over white,” he says. “I want a Impostor style fly to imitate slightly larger baitfish and then especially in the northeast you need something like a Surf candy which imitates a sand eel.”

I personally always have at least one with me popper fly even when a topwater blitz breaks out, but rarely is the popper the pattern that makes the most plays. Even when the surface is boiling with bass, those fish will take all of Carr’s must-haves, but it’s more fun to watch them take a popper.

Do your homework

None of your gear or flies are really important if you don’t know where to use them, but there are tricks to narrowing down productive locations. The thing to remember is that you can’t be a heroic caster—you have to find fish that are really close. Fortunately, striped bass don’t mind feeding on very close-in structure. In fact, in many cases, they’re attracted to it.

For example, despite the vastness of the ocean before you, striped bass love to run in deep troughs, very close to where the waves hit the sand. In the back bay and along piers, they’ll drive baitfish against rocks and grass as they feed. It’s always a smart move to target these locations at the tail end of the high tide and fish them on the outgoing tide, counting on a window of feeding action within the first few hours of the fall. But identifying prime locations—those with good depth at high tide and good current as the tide moves in—takes a little extra effort.

“Stripers are predators of convenience,” Carr says. “They don’t want to work hard for a meal, especially on the beach. But it’s up to you to know where those depth changes are that create easy feeding routes. To get an edge, watch the water when you’re not fishing. Go in the summer when you’re on vacation with your family. Go during all the different tides. Have a few launch locations in mind before the fall season starts.”

Finding fish is probably easier in the back bay, which is more like a lake or river, but the surf on the ocean can be daunting. Birds diving and diving can point you in the direction of bass, but there is a simple trick to identifying troughs. Follow a wave breaking offshore. If it rolls all the way to the beach without changing speed or slowing down, it is traveling along the bottom of a uniform depth; if it breaks, rolls, flattens out, and builds back up closer to the beach, the flat spot lets you know it has encountered a deeper trough. Find those flat spots within range of your cast and you are one step closer to winning.