Thursday, April 30, 2020

{Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders} Kayak Spey fishing

So the subject might the get "Huh?" query. I thought I would write this up to sort of get a casting/fishing fix now that we locked out and rained out.

 

Right before Fletcher's locked down in March, I met up with Terry Cummings to get some insight on kayak fishing for shad at Fletchers. I had purchased a fishing kayak last summer, and I was looking to catch my first shad from the kayak.  Many of you know me primarily as spey guy. Two-hand and single-hand spey is my preferred way to fish. Well, I thought why not on the kayak.  My Lure 11.5' fishing kayak has a height adjustable seat.  So I put the seat in its mid-height position.  I followed Terry out into the lower portion of the big eddy, right above Walker's Point, and anchored up.

I was able to effectively cast my 12.5' 8wt Reddington Chromer, casting an Airflow intermediate Skagit line (570 grain) with 10' feet of T-14 sinktip from the seated position. It took a few casts to get down the motion, but after a bit, I could lift and sweep, set the anchor and draw the D loop, come into the firing position, and launch a cast and shoot 30 to 40 feet of running line, making a total cast of up to 70' (if I really wanted to push).  Most of the time I kept at 40-50'.  A lot of fun, especially since I had to make no false casts, and no false casting a sinking line at that.

I found that I could make all the usually anchor sets (circle spey, snap-T, double spey, perry poke) from the seated position. Most of the shad I caught were caught the usual way of stripping the sunken tip back in quick short strips. But twice as I was swinging thru the current, no action to the fly from me, a shad actually hit the shad dart on the swing. That was fun, never had that happen before on my more standard trips of fishing up by Chain Bridge from the bank but also swinging the fly.  Up there I have always had to strip it back to get a strike.

I was looking forward to doing more of this kind of kayak fishing this spring.  I made it out one more time and caught some more shad. I also sacrificed an anchor to the bottom. The price you have to pay, I suppose.

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