Fly Fishing in Autumn

By Dennis Doyle

It was a still morning, and the early chill of fall was in the air. Stripping about 50 feet of line from my fly reel and allowing it to pile on the deck at my feet, I stretched successive sections of the thick strand between my hands to lessen its coil memory while reversing the pile of line to my right side. It was an old habit, and I didn’t have to think much doing it.

As I scanned the rocky shoreline, my thoughts went back to when I first worked this very place with a streamer fly, a Brooks Blonde as I recall. A lot had happened to the world since I started to fly fish some 60-odd years ago. But as I cast, time seemed to melt away as the rod became fresh again in my hand.

Muscle memory is a wonderful thing. Though my loop wasn’t as fast and narrow as it once had been, I made a respectable cast not far from the rocks along the shore. Stripping line carefully through the fingers of my rod hand, I danced the bright-white Platinum Blonde through the water.

Retrieving the streamer back to the side of my skiff, I worked out another cast, this one settling just a foot or two from the rocks. Pleased with myself, I stripped the line back and met with an almost immediate resistance. Luckily, muscle memory saved me one more time. Trapping the fly line with the fingers of my casting hand against the cork handle, I pulled the rod back firmly and jammed the hook home.

Lifting the eight-weight rod smartly, a lively fish now put a substantial curve into it, almost to the corks. I transferred line control to my left hand and let it slide through my fingers with as much resistance as I could apply as the fish ran quite a ways before pausing.

It was difficult to believe such luck, a rockfish on my second cast on a morning that I felt would simply be an exercise in nostalgia. Working the fish carefully, I retrieved line through my fingers, piling it on the deck, only to surrender it back two or three times to the protesting striper. It was not a big fish, but I certainly appreciated every bit of effort it exerted in its angry dashes for escape.

It has been almost 30 years since A River Runs Through It, a film staring a young Brad Pitt, broke upon America’s consciousness. Times seemed far gentler then and the country almost guileless in its relentless progress into history.

The film and the book, written in 1976 by Norman Maclean, opened with the line, “In my family there was no clear line between fly fishing and religion.” It continued with prose so elegant that both the original novella and the movie quickly became classics, more often quoted than Hemingway.

That romantic but tragic storyline that united a Missouri family around fly fishing almost overnight seduced thousands upon thousands of men and women throughout the nation to become fly anglers.

On the Chesapeake, the favored fly-fishing gamefish was the striped bass. Baltimore sportswriter Joe Brooks was the first to proclaim, “The striped bass not only can be caught with a fly; it is a fish that should be caught with a fly.”

That was way back in 1950. His enthusiasm was taken up by many others. Fellow Marylander and sportswriter Lefty Kreh was a friend and contemporary of Brooks and rode the wave of enthusiasm created by A River Runs Through It. Kreh became instrumental in making the long rod a salt-water favorite popular worldwide.

Over the years, the popularity of fly-fishing has waned, particularly here on the Bay. Today a fly rod is rare to see plied on the Chesapeake as anglers have moved on to more interesting, more productive and easier-to-use tackle.

Now through November, however, our rockfish are roaming the skinnier waters that can be easily worked with streamers and the fly rod.

If your time fishing the Bay has become unchallenging, finessing a striper to hand with a long, limber fly rod and a streamer fly may restore the pleasure.

Fish Finder

The fall feed is progressing nicely. Even with the poor numbers of rockfish becoming ever more evident, it is still possible to catch your limit. They are schooling now for winter and chasing the schools of baitfish doing the same. The mouths of all the tributaries are good hunting grounds, as are the channel edges and main Bay shorelines.

Trolling smaller bucktails and soft plastics is a good way to locate fish, as is prowling the shorelines in the early morning hours and tossing surface lures and light jigs. Shore anglers are doing well in the evenings and up to midnight, when the possession of stripers on the water becomes illegal.

White perch are schooling for winter, providing a last chance to put some up in the freezer for the days to come. Spanish mackerel are still chasing up and down the main Bay. Crabs are getting even fatter.