Even an angler without a clue as to where flats are located on Long Island can stumble onto a few by simply heading for a cliff-lined shoreline. Over time, the forces of erosion take sand from the precipice, dumping at the face, creating a flat.
Your chances of seeing stripers soar on flats that hold other marine life. Baitfish are an excellent sign, but if there’s no visible bait, don’t be too hasty about picking up and moving because there might be “micro-bait” in the water—stuff that isn’t easily detected by the naked eye. Birds flying up and down the shoreline are a positive sign, as are sea robins flushing up shrimp. Oftentimes you’ll spot stripers following the sea robins, poaching an easy dinner. (Remember that pushpole-chaser mentioned earlier?)
Of course the seeing and casting part of this game is easier under sunny, blue skies and a light breeze behind our backs, but such conditions are more exception than rule. It can be discouraging when you have booked a few days in the prime of the sight-fishing season and heavy rain, fog or howling winds move in. In this case, anglers normally pull the plug, but many iffy weather days can be salvaged. Under foggy conditions, you can get very close to cruising striped bass; the fish tend to get careless, and must feel less conspicuous, because tails are high in the air and backs even come out of the water as the daring bass press in to extremely skinny shallows looking for goodies.
Top Flies
There are many effective striper flies, and after a few years of fishing the flats you narrow it down to your go-to flies. While I have a few favorite flies that get the bass fired up, it isn’t just the fly that matters. It’s how you work it, but with that said, top Long Island flats flies include big bunker patterns, used in the early part of the season. Light brown Deceivers with long splayed feathers tied on No. 2 and 4 hooks are great for shoreline flats. They tend to look like small lobsters and crabs, and maybe even baby sea robins, and are very effective. A No. 4 and 6 sparsely tied sand eel imitation, tied with olive and white Ultrahair, with one strand of holographic flash, is deadly. These are so sparse that they look like nothing, but are frighteningly effective in the latter part of the season.
White Deceivers and 6-inch squid flies work at times, too, but the key is to know when to use the flies you have, and then how to retrieve them. If you see no apparent bait on a flat that has heaps of cruising fish, try a tiny pattern, something that imitates the small sand eel, for example. If you see schools of bunker, tie on a 5-inch bunker pattern. Match the hatch, and then if that doesn’t work, try different speeds of retrieve. Long, slow strips will get many follows, but a pause between the strips may elicit a strike.
When strikes are at a premium, don’t be afraid to use shocking patterns and excessive sizes. If the fish still aren’t interested, Mother Nature is taking a break, which would be a good time to eat lunch. —
A.S.
When faced with a gray day, I simply fan-cast my flies to cover maximum water, being careful to fish around rocks, coves, bars, dropoffs and other structure that normally harbors fish. This blind fishing can be tiring, but sometimes it’s the only option, and it is damn good practice for the real thing. I turn to small poppers and Gurglers (popular foam-bodied surface flies) in the backwaters on foggy or cloudy days. They’re great prospectors. I pole along within casting distance of the shore and have anglers cast toward the grassy edges, with sloppy, slow pops. The bass come dashing toward your fly, leaving behind a wake that ends in a crashing heap at the end of your line. A true heart-stopper.
One advantage of gray, overcast skies is that fish have their guard down a bit, and the absence of glare allows you to spot them more easily. Though you won’t see fish as readily at a distance, don’t fret—by poling quietly, you’ll get short shots at stripers and many times actually hook them with your leader in your rodtip. It’s a major reflex test. Under these conditions, don’t ask your guide or person poling you if a dark form is a fish. There isn’t time for that. Always assume it is a fish and cast. No harm done. Remember that fish don’t always look like fish in the water. They can look like logs, as I know all too well, and they can look like humps on the bottom. Look for movement. If it moves, it probably breathes, and will probably eat. Stripers move at a steady pace over a shoreline flat. Always pole very slowly, allowing oncoming fish to come to you. Or, if you are wading, stand still and let them swim to you.
On light-colored, sandy bottoms, spotting fish is relatively easy for quite a distance. When you are fishing with a guide, let the guide look for fish out at the perimeter while you look for fish closer in, where the fish seem to materialize before your eyes. Long Island flats are typically spattered with rocks and weed patches that are fishy but rather tricky to sight fish. This is where a trained eye comes in handy. But even after years of guiding on these flats, I advise my charter customers to cast at anything that remotely looks like a fish, because I have been fooled too many times to count, and, frankly, it gets more and more embarrassing all the time.
