Citation Speckled Trout on Fly (Light Tackle and Fly Tactics for Gator Trout)
Citation Speckled Trout on the Fly (Light Tackle and Fly Tactics for Gator Trout)
Tide Water on the Fly
Speckled trout on the fly-rod
Chesapeake Bay and connecting tributaries
Gator Speckled Trout on the Fly Rod in Wrightsville Beach North Carolina
Fishing the Hampton Roads and the Elizabeth River
Jud: Wayne thanks for hopping on the podcast with me. I know people are excited to have you on. This is Wayne, he is a fly fishing and light tackle guide up on the Chesapeake Bay. Why don’t we start with your backstory– how you got into fishing and how it’s brought you to where you are today?
Wayne: Thanks Jud. I appreciate the opportunity to be with you. Big fan of you and your podcast. Been listening for a while so this is a treat for me. I grew up in Wilmington, DE and my father had a place down on the Chester River in the upper part of the bay in Maryland. So just about every weekend, we would go down to a little cabin right on Chester River. That section of the river is mostly fresh water but we did have some stripers that would move up, but mostly we fished for bass and crappie and bluegill and even carp and catfish and, so I did a lot on the weekends with my father and he was really the inspiration, like so many of us. My dad got me into fishing and I did a little bit of fly fishing when I was good. Mostly for bream and crappie. I got into a little fly fishing when I was a teenager for trout. White Clay Creek up in Newark and the lower part of Pennsylvania and then I moved to Virginia to play football at William and Mary and I really enjoyed the college. I went down to Duke for PT school. I’m also a physical therapist and I continue to see patients one day a week. I do very specific examinations, not practicing anymore, but I do this examination one day a week. I had a physical therapy practice for 30 years and fished recreationally. In 2008. I went out to Colorado and fished the Arkansas River with a former teammate. Three of us went out and we had such a great time. I got smitten with the fly fishing bug and had been fishing with Chris Newsome up on the middle peninsula and he had taken me under his wing and got me learning how to double haul and Chris made me a much better angler. Then two years ago I started my charter business and fish here all over the peninsula in Hampton Road. I don’t really go North of the York River. I work closely with Current Culture in Richmond and Fly Shop up in Richmond. I fish all over Hampton Roads, out in the Bay. I don’t go to the Eastern shore of Virginia, so I stay on the western shore, but anywhere from the York River south all the way down into the lower stretches of Deep Creek and the Southern branch of the Elizabeth River. I can be in any branches of the Liz or the Rudy inlet if I’ve got somebody that wants to pop a bunch of small specks and so I keep my boat on a trailer and in the summer I fish a bigger boat in the ocean fishing for Cobia. I come out of Back River and so that’s kind of the quick resume.
Jud: That’s awesome, man! I hope it stays this way for y’all but it seems like the fishery you’re in is mostly untapped. I mean any fishery feels the pressure, but with social media, and the people I follow, I’m just blown away by the fishery up there. You’ve got the small slot drum fishery and you’ve got the big red fish, cobia, all sight-fishable. Massive speckled-trout and stripers and there’s just a lot going on. It’s like the cold water Florida as far as the go.
Wayne: I think you’re right Jud. I always say we’re at the Northern end of the Southern Fishing and the Southern end of the Northern fishing. The last three or four years we’ve had terrific slot size redfishing. We will go through short stretches where we don’t have those fish in the system. The big red drum in the lower part of the bay is insane. Last year’s Cobia bottom mass was excellent for small to medium sized fish. We certainly don’t have the big Cobia in the system that we had 10 years ago but for me, with flying, size isn’t the critical thing. Most of my guys are catch and release anyway and they are happy to catch a 38 inch Cobia on a fly. You’re right about speckled trout. We tend to have big speckled trout and the good news is this rapid decline in temperature we just had, I thought we were going to have a pretty significant fish kill, but I’ve had some really good reports from the last few days. I think we’ve hopefully survived the cold snap. The speckled trout, at least today and yesterday, there have been good reports so hopefully it will be good next year too.
Jud: Have you heard anything about any type of fish kill?
Wayne: Nothing dead, but there are some fish in really shallow water on the mud flats but they are still moving around. But people ought to respect that though and not take fish in the idle of a cold stun. Let those fish get through this time. I think the fishery is going to survive, if we have more cold weather ahead of us. But what we just had worried me because it went down hard.
Jud: They can survive those colder temps, but when it drops really quickly, they don’t have the ability to go deep, it hurts them badly.
Wayne: I think we weathered it pretty good, so far.
Citation Speckled-Trout
Jud: Awesome, I was nervous and that was one of the questions I wanted to hit on. Out of all your fishing, I really want to dive into what’s going on now, but as far as what you are passionate about, what is your favorite season of the year up there on the fly in the lower chesapeake?
Wayne: That’s a loaded question Jud, but my favorite season is the summertime for Cobia and late fall into winter for big speckled-trout. But the easiest time I have as a guide is in the fall. Between October and November are really good months for us as far as consistency. As long as I have a day that's fishable, October and November have been outstanding and we can get all three of our main species at that time: Speckled trout, Puppy and Red Drum and stripers. They may not be the biggest fish of the year but as far as guiding, we can have days that are just outstanding. All three species on fly and that’s probably the easiest fishing period I have. The epic stuff that we do is summertime Cobia on Fly. It’s incredible. We had a really good year this past year. Our winter time speckled trout on fly is incredible too. It’s a nuanced fishery, meaning if you took a new angler and asked him to try and catch big speckled trout on fly that may not be the type of day the individual is looking for because you aren’t going to get big numbers/. But if you have somebody who has done plenty in the past and is looking to catch a large speckled trout, that time of year is the best time of year. I see these guys like Charlie Church chasing specks year-round. Catching them in June, July and August, but I;m out chasing cobia so I don’t get a shot at summertime speck. Our big speckled trout come, when we’re fishing for speckled trout.
Jud: Yeah maybe if you’re bait fishing on the bottom,but other than that probably not.
Wayne: Exactly. You do have some crazy catch out there. Like jack sometimes or occasionally a tarpon on in the Bay. We had a couple off-shore fishing. My mate got a Mahi-Mahi inside the Bay last year. Little bitty guy, but I had never heard of that before.
Jud: That’s really neat. I’m with you. I do love speckled-trout and I love sight-fishing too. There isn’t much in the world of sight-fishing speckled-trout, but changing it up keeps it interesting. No matter what you do, if you’re on the water a lot it makes you a better angler to have a few different pursuits and a few different species you like to target. Especially as a guide, I know I can get very burnt out on redfish in the middle of the summer when I’m targeting them everyday. It’s a breath of fresh air to something a little different.
Jud: So I’ve gotta ask. I saw a speckled-trout you posted a week or two ago that was caught on fly. I can’t remember the size, but it was a big one.
Wayne: It was 29 and a half. I had my brother in law down and similar to a lot of other stories, he came from the salt water world and eventually picked up a fly-rod and started developing that skill set. You have the other group that came from the freshwater fly background, but Steve came from a saltwater conventional background but has become a really good fly-angler. Last year he committed himself to practicing a lot. A good double hauler and you know he was down with me for two days, but I had three days in a row right before the full moon. That classic, right before the full moon, when you hear about a lot of large citation size speckled trout being caught. We just timed that trip well and the first day we went out, we popped them pretty good. We actually had three citations including a 24 and and 28 and a half along with that 29 and a half.
Jud: All on fly rod?
Wayne: Each day and the next few days as the moon got larger and larger, the fishing dropped off just a little but of course. We kind of hit a homerun on the first day. We went out, fished multiple areas, but similar where you had structure and current and depth and the right bait. We were marking fish on my down scanner and my side scanner. We knew it was going to be good.
Jud: How much did that fish weigh?
Wayne: It’s funny cause I had a scale on the boat, but in VA we do a length citation and my priority was to get her back in the water so I never even thought about weighing. We took the length and then got her back overboard. I really don’t know Jud. I would guess about 9 pounds, maybe but I don’t know. It was just one of those things where I never even thought about it. You know you’re in the middle of a good bite, so we just wanted to get back to fishing. It was a great day, it was fun and for somebody who has really worked at their skill set, to have a day where it confirms “hey I’ve been working on this and I got it done” that’s what it’s all about.
Speckled-Trout Fishing in the Colder Months
Jud: That’s incredible. So take me through what it looks like to fly fish the speckled trout. So set up wintertime speckled trout fishing in the lower bay. Do you have trout? A lot of people think trout don’t winter there, they all push down to NC but it seems like that’s not true
Wayne: There was a wonderful study done in 2017 by the Marine Science Department at William and Mary that discussed what happens with Speckled-Trout, their movements in the fall and typically you seem them split into thirds. The smaller speckled trout move out of the bay and either move down into the mouth or into the Atlantic ocean. But the bigger ones head in the other direction and two-thirds of them will stay up in the mud slats during the wintertime. So the back lLynnHaven or the back of the Elizabeth River Systems or up in the middle peninsula. All of these river systems, the James River now, we have a pretty solid biomass that stays up at Surry power plant. We’ll see those fish moving up the James in November and December. Usually if I’m fishing the James up around Mulberry Island, I’m fishing for overslot of slot redfish. But we’ll have fly catches of large speckled trout that run up there and I’m sure they’re heading up to winter up in that section of the James which is further up than people think these speckled trout will run. You’re looking at a 30 mile run from the mouth of the Ocean to up around Williamsburg. A third of the fish push out in the ocean, a third stay in the middle, and a third push down in the Hampton Roads areas, the Elizabeth River and LynnHaven and Rudy. It’s a large river at the bottom end of the James and I’ve done really well in the Nan’s for speckled trout. Last year in December and now again this year. It’s a big transition for me; that November fishery when the water temps say mid-60 I’m fishing hard bottom. Oyster shell and rock and shallower areas, you know 3-7 feet. I’m not worried about deep water access, but as the winter comes, these fish will push up into soft bottoms, mud bottom and I have a boat that only drafts about 16 inches, I have friends on little Skiffs in 5-6 inches of water catching speckled-trout in half a foot of water. I tend to be deeper just because of the boat I run out of. I typically have success anywhere from 2-3 feet this time of year. They’ll slide down and we’ll fish in 12-15 feet. I had a friend of mine catching in the Elizabeth River before this warm front moved in and he was jigging with blade baits in 30 feet of water. He caught two citations, so there are so big fish that will lay deep also, near bridges and channels, that sort of thing. With fly, I don’t typically target those types of fish. If they are below 15 feet, I don’t really like messing with them. It takes too long to get a fly to drop even on sinking lines, so it’s not a lot of fun for the angler. We typically target fish that are suspended 15 feet or higher. In the afternoons in the winter time they’ll get up on those mud flats and we’ll use floating lines and unweighted deceivers, but don’t go top water in the wintertime, I don’t think they have enough energy to eat a top water like they typically do in the fall. As the season goes on and the water temp gets below 50 and close to 40, which is where it’s at now, fish are lethargic and your bite is much more inconsistent and slower. You’re going to have a period of an hour or 75 minutes when the bite is on, then you’ll have a lot of nothing. But you’ve gotta have an angler that understands that and can persevere through those slow periods. Sometimes it's a little too slow. The last few years, I’ve had people who don’t really like wintertime speckled trout fishing and I understand why. It’s not everybody's cup of tea but if you’ve caught a lot of fish… it’s almost like trophy hunting. If you’re sort of mentally built for it then it can be outstanding fishing. I kind of feel like you do Jud. If you catch anything over 25 inches, is an outstanding fish and even anything over 20 is a beautiful fish. You catch one all day long and it’s worth the effort, to me.
Jud: I agree; I love catching lots of trout but if I could choose, and I had a healthy fishery closer to me, I would just target big fish. One or two bites a day; it’s fun to work and test yourself for that long. You start to doubt and then it all comes together and rewards that consistency and that drive to push through the slower periods and you have to be confident in what you’re doing to be able to sit there and fish for big speckled trout.
Wayne: When you understand that’s the game, when the bite’s not on and it’s slow, the person is okay with that. And that’s true with Cobia on fly too. Cobia on fly is just as hard as tarpon on fly. If you go down to Key West and catch a single tarpon on Fly, you’ve had a great day. Same thing with Cobia in the summertime. You catch a single Cobia on fly in the summer, then you’ve had a spectacular day. Speckled trout are similar, if you catch a couple of really nice ones on fly, you’ve had a great day.
Using Electronic Graphs and Scans
Jud: In the winter time, fly and light tackle wise, does speckled trout become kind of an electronic fishery? Are you using your graph and side scan a good bit to locate this fish?
Wayne: I am, and that’s been a recent improvement in my fishing and guiding. I would argue that the last two years prior to this one, I would definitely use my electronics some, but not like I have this year. I don’t have live scope, but some of my buddies that are really good speckled trout fisherman are using live scope very effectively.I do have a side scanner, but I am planning on putting a live scope on my triton. I’ve got a 22 foot triton. I have become much more reliant on my electronic, even for split and overslot redfish. Back in November, I was running a shoreline for speckled trout at the time and we had caught some nice ones; it was mid november and I looked at my side scanner and it lit up with about 10 marks, but I figured they were a school of mullet, but I spun by head around and there they were, about 20 schooled up reds. We stayed on the whole pattern for about two weeks. It was in the mouth of the Elizabeth River and I could run all over that area and at some point we were speckled-trout fishing throughout the day, blind casting. And at some point my side scanner would show me a school of fish and frequently they would be a school of drum, and they were big drum, you know 30 inch class drum anywhere from 26-34 and the water gets crystal clear, just like it does everywhere in the wintertime when all the microorganisms die off and you have all the clear water and that was the case, so I’ve become much more reliant on my side scanner to show me where the fish are and try to target that fish with the fly. That’s been a lot of fun. The other thing we did is step-fishing. One thing I say on my boat is “Mydas” Manage your depth and speed. We’ll mark fish at 12 feet on a drop and down in the southern branch. For instance, I’ve got some excellent areas which are basically right off the channel in the southern branch. They’re not really in structure so not really oriented toward shoreline. More right outside the channel. You’ve got these drop offs and underwater points and we’ll have fish laying in a specific depth. You also have current, so the whole idea is “how do I get my fly down to that fish that’s flying at a certain level?” One of things I’ve learned from Rudy Laviser who’s an outstanding speckled-trout fisherman, conventional guide. He’s got a livescope and the one thing he tells me is that he doesn’t see speckled-trout going down for a Lure. They either go straight ahead or up. Tell your clients to keep their fly slightly above where the fish are. If I’m in 15 feet of water, and I’ve got fish that are stationed from 10-14 feet deep, we’re doing a countdown method on a fly where I’m trying to get my fly to about 10 or even 9 feet. Slightly higher. That was a lesson learned from Rudy, who’s learned that from livescope and literally watching lures drop and seeing how the speckled-trout react. I’ve become a much better fisherman this year with Rudy’s prompts and using my electronics more effectively. For me, combining my down scanner with a side scanner so I can see the fish in 2D and then with live scope, you’re taking it to a whole different level. That’ll be an addition to my boat here coming up. It’s a big part of the success of speckled trout fishing this time of year. No question.
Current vs. Stillwater Fishing
Jud: Now, are you fishing a lot of current or is it a lot of stillwater fishing like you would find in the Pamlico SOund? Or both?
Wayne: All of his assets and all of his negatives. One of my negatives is, I hate not fishing current. I like fishing current. So if you go down the southern branch of the Elizabeth River there are a couple spots with no current. They are basically coves and I cannot stand getting in those coves. There is nothing to orient yourself on. I grew up largemouth bass fishing, where you were looking for a pile or a structure or a point or a current, or the mouth of a creek, and that’s true with saltwater fishing too. Most of my striper fishing in the 90s was all based on those factors and then puppy drum fishing as you know, you can see before you ever get to a point, everything’s perfect here. We’re going to catch them right here. Then you have these pots for speckled trout where they are literally laying, no current at all and it drives me bananas to fish those areas. A friend of mine fished one yesterday, and he only caught Speckled-trout. Four of them were between 22 and 24 and I told him I would have been dying a slow death fishing that area. I like to fish current. Most of my big fish early in the season so November and the first half of December, they do come in areas that have current. And I think as the water gets even colder, I think that some of these fish will winter in areas that don’t have current and that’s a fishery that quite frankly I’m not very good at. Part of it is that it just doesn’t make sense to me. You’re running a twitch bait or a jerk bait or hopping a jig off the bottom, super slow, but it never makes sense to me what direction and how’s the current affecting this. I really prefer to fish something that has structure and current. I probably spend more time in areas like that, where there is plenty of productive water that doesn’t have current. Especially this time of year.
Jud: You’ve gotta fish what you like and what you’re confident in. A lot of our trout fishing is current based trout fishing. In North Carolina, there are a lot of fisheries, the Pamlico sound, Albemarle sound, Currituck, those type of areas have really good trout fishing but no current and I’m with you. It doesn’t make sense when you come from a place or a desire to fish that current. What are these fish doing? Free swimming and cruising? It does make sense though. The more and more I learn about trout, they are so much like Tarpon. Tarpon will go and lay up in these big areas where they don’t have to use energy. They’ll spend time just sitting over mud, just relaxing. They’ll feed in those areas, but they are also just loafing and spending time there and the Tarpon will also fall into these areas of heavy current, where food is coming by like a highway, so they can feed heavily and then slide back into these areas where the temperature and pressure is different and they can just lay up and not have to worry about it. Trout and Tarpon in the salt water world and probably the most similar that I can think of.
Wayne: That’s incredible to hear. The last two weeks I’ve been watching a bunch of videos of this guy Kelly Gallow who is a renown fresh water trout guide and owns a fly shop out in Montana. I’ve done a lot of fishing out west, but trying to compare fresh water trout to saltwater trout, very similar Jud. They act very similarly; only freshwater trout are exposed typically to much more current than our saltwater trout, but not the depth. They’ll typically only lay in 1-4 feet of water. Those guys are fishing shallow water all the time. With our speckled trout we’re fishing much deeper water 12-15 feet, with a fly I don’;t go deeper than that. I have a buddy of mine who is caught in 20 feet of water, but I’m not trying to do that on a fly. But it is amazing how these fish have similar personalities to other species. My speckled-trout that I’m fishing does have a lot of similarities to the freshwater namesake. Even though it’s a drum and a trout, not even the same family, they do act very much the same.
Setting up Successful Speckled-Trout Fishing
Jud: I am very curious to know how you catch speckled-trout on the fly rod. If I’m fly-fishing here it’s usually redfish, albacore, you know some speckled-trout, some amber jack and Cobia a little bit but the majority is redfish. We’ve got a trout fishery where I am in NC, but it isn't like other places. You are known in the circle of people that I talk to, as the speckled-trout on the fly guy. So take me through, what it looks like to go out and target speckled-tour on the fly rod. Maybe some of your tricks or ways you fish to target these fish?
Wayne: 60% of my fishing is with an intermediate sink line and typically an inch and half to two inches of sink per second. Fly lines, there are three typical lines. A floating line, an intermediate sink and a full sink. The full sinking lines are three inches or greater and we’ll say t-10 are sinking at 10 inches per second, a t-8 is 8 seconds, etc. If you look at my intermediate sink line, it’s my standard line for 60% of my fishing, an inch and a half to two inches of drop per second. I don’t want it to be dropping my fly way down deep. One of the key principles in terms of your entire. You don’t want your fly to be above your fly line, you want your fly line to be above your fly. So if you’re throwing a lure that’s braided or four carbon on a conventional system, your lure is going to be lower than your line. The same thing is going to be true with your fly. You want your fly sinking at a quicker level that your fly line. So typically, if you think about speckled-trout fishing, really late December it’s going to be 3-5 feet of water, but we can use a IAM line that’s only sinking and inch and a half to two inches per second and a 9 foot reader and it’s typically a graded liter so you can either buy a store bought progressive leader or you can make them yourself which is what I usually do. Your tip is going to be somewhere around 5 pounds, the leader doesn’t matter a whole lot. It can be as short as 6 or 7 feet on your IAM systems or as long as 12 feet. So it’s an intermediate sink line to a long leader and then all kinds of different flies, but if I had to pick one it would be a 3.5-4 inch half and half pair of medium weighted lead eyes. I am big fan of purple, yellow, white, big fan of 808 colors so you know orange, black and brown. I am a big fan of all white on certain days, I am big fan of yellow and white on certain days. It’s exactly the same color game we use on the conventional side of the house. That’s about 60% of my fishing. So even last year and the year prior to Christmas I had much better mudflat fishing so I was fishing both mornings and afternoons. Typically around 1:00 at high tide, you’ve got an outgoing tide until dark and we would hit these points and creeks and you might be in the mouth of the creek, you might be pushed back into it, but these speckled-trout would be laying on the IM line in three feet of water, off some of these points just like a striper would 20 years ago. A little bit further back than typically where I think of a redfish. So when I look at a point with current, I always think striper in the front, redfish behind him and speckled-trout behind him. That’s typically how they lay. You might be a little further back than you would normally be for a striper or a red, but you’d be thinking about that drop off behind the point. Last year we had really good fishing in the afternoons on our mudflats and those types of scenarios. This year hasn’t been as good that way, it’s been deeper. This year, I’ve been much more successful in say 12 feet of water. Still using an intermediate sink line and a half and half or a clauser or a weighted deceiver. A lot of people have commented on instagram about how I weight my flies and I use a loop knot on my flies. I put beads on the bottom of the loop and it does two things. (1) Sometimes you get a fly that doesn't ride like you want it to. It’s riding at a little angle. Obviously if it’s spinning you want to remove it and get another one. But sometimes, they don’t ride like you want it to so if you put a couple beads on the lower part of the loop it’ll keel that fly and give you a little bit of noise. I’ll use the same fly and just change the weighting system. Some might be as many as three beads or some might have none if I’m fishing really shallow water. If I’m fishing 10-11 feet, I’d use an intermediate sink link and I might have 3 beads on the exact same fly. So it might be a three inch deceiver or a three inch half and half and I’m weighting it to get that fly down. And the longer we get into the winter, these last two weeks particularly, if I’m throwing a twitch bait with a conventional because my angler’s not catching, and I’m catching speckled-trout with extremely slow retrieve, really small twitches, which as you know as the winter comes in that’s sort of frequently what you have to do. You have to be more subtle with your twitches and slow down your retrieve, and the fly angler has to do the same thing. Sometimes the fly is too heavy and you're down on the bottom and you're getting grass when you bring it back up. Frequently, we’re not deep enough. We may move to a full sinking line when we get to depths of 8 feet or more, particularly with currents, I might move to a T-5 which is a little bit heavier than what I’m using with the t-2 or 1 and a half. Shorten up my leader and now the heavier the sink line, the shorter the leader, so if I get to t-10, I might be using a 4-5 foot leader. I have buddies tell me it’s still too long and I should go to a three foot leader when you’re fishing t-10 but I typically use a four foot leader, the idea being that you want that fly in close proximity to your fly line and you want to have predictability on where that fly is. So when we’re fishing in 8-12 foot depths, or even down to 15, we’ll use a full sinking line and my go to on a 8 weight is a T8, so dropping 8 inches per second; we use a countdown method so if the fly was dropping a little faster than the fly, which is what you want, if the fish is 10 feet down and you’re throwing T8 sinking lines, then you’re going to want to think about maybe 15 second drop fly. It’s going to be a little bit below your fly line. Back that up a little bit; maybe it’s a 12 second drop, then you start your retreat. That’s sort of the process we’re using. You’re selecting your fly line, shortening your leader the heavier your fly line. You always want your fly to drop faster than your fly lines. Literally, when I have a T8 fly line, I will strip out a bunch of line and throw the fly line overboard and the fly overboard everything with no tension on it and see how much faster the fly is dropping than the fly line. And that gives me an idea of what that countdown is going to be and then I explain to the angler where we’re fishing. The heavier the line, the shorter the cast. So if we’re fishing with floating line and we’re fishing the point and I think the fish are stacked up behind the point. The current, even this time of year, I may be having the angler throw a 60 or 70 foot cast if I have a really good angler. Trying to keep the boat further away. When we’re fishing deeper water, there’s no spooky factor so you can almost fish dead under the boat. That's kind of the equation of trying to match up what you might do with a jerk bait and a countdown versus a jig, where you’re trying to run one off the bottom. Try to visualize where is my fly in relation to the fish; Where were my fish on my down and side scanners? Where do I want my angler to keep his fly. Then the question is twitching vs steady retrieve? And I don’t know Jud. I’ve seen guys absolutely smoke speckled-trout this time of year with a quarter ounce jig head with a three ounce soft paddle tail and they aren't giving it any action at all. And then the guy next to them gives it a little twitch every once in a while and not catch anything and I’ve cut it
That's the $64,000 question.
Jud: Might as well try both until one works.
Wayne: This year we incorporated some indicator fish in there.
Jud: I heard you talking about that.
Wayne: The freshwater guys are taking up a fly and they’re running about 150% of the depth that they want the fly to lay in. So if they are fishing three feet, they would put a 4 and half foot length, they would put essentially a bobber, there is a variety of indicators. We’ve started incorporating this into our routine. It’s very effective. We did get one citation on it. It’s sort of classic bobber fishing that you would do in conventional fishing. You drop it down to a fly. The only difference is, if you try to imitate a bait fish, you want the fly to run horizontal and most flies if they’re hanging from the line and the line is relatively vertical. The indicator is drifting with the current overtop of the hill which would be a classic environment in the southern branch of the Elizabeth River. You might have a hill again running right on the side of the channel. Running from fifteen to eighteen feet would be a classic hill I would run. I’m marking fish at 12 feet so I want the fly to be 12 feet below the indicator. You’re gonna use about 1.25 the distance because that current isn’t as much as what you find in freshwater creeks. So if you want it down 10 feet, you need about a 12 feet leader and a small bobber that’s put onto your fly line. And then your fly, because you want it to sit horizontal, not hanging up, you have to weight the fly a little differently. So I just ordered these stainless steel straight pins, you put a pin on the front of your fly, and on the pens are tunsend beads so once you’ve got it on it sort of keels the fly down so that fly is laying horizontal and line is straight up so you tie that on to a jig hook and that works really well. We had good success with that this year. It’s the first time I incorporated indicative fishing into my saltwater fishing and with the right angler, some people prefer to fish full sinking lines and that works too, other people love it. It’s very similar to what they did in freshwater and so we kind of do that and the last part of is the sight fishing. We do an occasional sight-fishing speckled trout fishery and that’s right now. So, I had some friends that did that today in a mudflat down in Hampton Roads and very shallow fishing 1-2 feet and they had big speckled trout up on that mud flat and you could see them and they did real well.
Jud: That’s awesome!
Wayne: Yeah! That’s not my bread and butter but that happens. Maybe we get lucky tomorrow and bump into something like that, but it’s more of an opportunistic type thing.
Jud: Yeah you gotta look at the conditions and knowing when to go and kind of making that happen,. That’s cool, I am so jealous of that fishery up there. If I could move somewhere to learn to fish and to start over I feel like it would be up where you are. That whole bay is so cool and the big fish y’all get in the summer. Just really cool opportunities with Cobia and Redfish and so many cool opportunities.
Jud: Do y’all have sight-fishing for slot drum year round?
Wayne: No, at least I don’t. I know some of the guys that will push back in the creeks at dead low tie will see some fish that are pushing water, but our water tends to be pretty murky in the summertime. Now keep in mine, I don’t fish the eastern shore so I don’t want to represent what the guys do over there. There might be some opportunities on the eastern shore to sight-fish for reds. My opportunities for sight-fishing reds is November on. I’m essentially structure fishing until then, but once our water clears up we can start sight fishing for reds. Low tide creeks hold redfish and we do have some of those and they can get their skiffs back there. My boat just draws too much water so I’ve not done some of that fishing, but I’ve got a buddy of mine that’s been successful with it. Coastal flats and any marsh that sort of thing, but I don’t really know a lot about it quite frankly.
Jud: I don’t know if I’d mess with redfish if I could go fly fish for big trout like that. That’s such a cool opportunity.
Advice for Anglers
Before we wrap this up, is there anything we have not touch on that you want to touch on before we finish up?
Wayne: I would throw out that I’m excited that you had be on from a fly fishing perspective. One of the reason I got into guiding for fly-fishing was I was a conventional fisherman locally for a long time and pretty much all of my friends are conventional fishermen. When I went the fly-fishing route recreationally, my conventional buddies didn’t want me to do any fly fishing. We would go on trips and you know there was definitely a negative sort of feeling if I brought a fly rod or wanted to break the fly rod out. I would just suggest that fishing, to me, if you’ve caught enough and fished long enough, you appreciate that fishing isn’t about catching fish necessarily. It’s about the experience. To your point earlier, it’s about figuring out the puzzle and learning new techniques. I love bait casting. I grew up fishing for largemouth bass with a baitcaster and I am much happier with a baitcaster in my hand than I am with a spin rod in my hand, but I found out really quick if I was fishing docks and needed to throw underneath the dock and have my lure drop vertically under a structure, a spinning rod was a much better tool for fishing at the Bay Bridge tunnel back in the 90s. There was something about that flat and you could get your line in with a spinning rod, and I would get out-fished by someone who was using a spinning rod when I was using a bait caster. Springing rod is better when you’re throwing in the wind. Frequently there comes a point when making a really long cast with a 2 oz bucktail, I think most of the guys can throw much longer with the spinning rod. Even though I love using a baitcaster, some situations require a spinning rod and I feel the same way about a fly rod.It’s another tool in your arsenal and it does take time to learn it sort of like learning how to throw a baitcaster. So there is a skill that’s developed, hand-eye coordination, a motor pattern that you have to learn to be successful at fly fishing. What I would suggest is that it is worth the effort. It’s another experience that we can have fishing. I was so excited that you wanted to have be on Jud because I love conventional fishing, i’ve been doing it for a long long time, I jut felt like in Hampton Roads we didn’t have a saltwater fly fishing resources and now we’ve got a couple and I’m excited to promote fly fishing in our area. We’ve got good enough fishing and one of my favorite days is going out and like my buddy Murph says, “drilling fish.” We might catch some school stripers up in the James on fly, The opportunity for a new angler to get 50 or 60 repetitions of strip setting and manning their line and understanding how to control depth with the fly rod and different lines and all those things. For me, the idea of the conventional guide embracing fly fishing is another tool in your bag and another experience that makes fishing incredible. I’m sure you feel the same way I do about this which is people tend to be focused on spots and there’s two things I’ve learned over the years and I do them everyday. I fish with my eyes; I don’t worry too much about the spots. I make a promise to myself everyday that I’m going to fish a new area. IT might only be 200 yards up from where I’ve fished before, but I am always just blown away by something I didn’t expect. You get to a new area and you realize you didn’t know there was this much water or that there was current or no idea that there was structure on the bottom, but now all the sudden you’ve got a new spot. A pet peeve is that we have a limited resource and a growing number of people that want to access it. So don’t worry if you’re fishing someone else’s spot. Go find your area! Everything you’re doing to educate anglers, it “go find your own area.” I live that everyday and I love incorporating the philosophy of “fish with your eyes” and “fish a new area every single day.” For me as a guide, I love to see my anglers improve and I love to find a new spot. You just go “Oh man, I had no idea! I didn’t expect to catch fish there but you do.” You have to go searching but if someone has a spot, leave it and find your own that has similar types of factors and you’re going to find fish.
Jud: Most definitely. I think the most enjoyable thing to me is the pursuit of the unknown in fishing. Exploring new stuff and putting pieces of the puzzle together. That is what is truly addicting, I believe. Instagram and social media has made it this thing of posting pictures and catching big fish and that’s what it’s all about, but really as far as what fills your heart up and fills you as an angler is that you realize you learned something new or found a new way or place to catch fish. That is really where the passion comes from. Not what other people see or know about you. I’m like you, I love conventional fishing, I do a lot of it, but my heart is with the fly fishing. I was really excited to have you on and be able to talk about that. When I started the podcast, I was nervous to go just fly fishing because I felt like I was pushing out a lot of potential listeners, but now that it has it’s foothold, I’m really excited to bring on a lot more fly aspects. My buddy Cameron is going to be hosting an episode a week, and he is going to have a heavy focus on the fly fishing side of things. I think most of his are going to be fly fishing based and I’ll be doing a good bit more myself.
Thank you so much for coming on and talking to us, but I really want to have you on each season. When we get into Spring I want to get you back on and talk about your fishery and what you’re doing and kind of highlight your area. I do appreciate you hopping on and look forward to doing another one. Wayne I hope you catch some fish tomorrow man.
Wayne: Me too Jud! Thank you so much for having me.
Jud: Tell people how they can find you if they want to
Wayne: Tidewateronthefly.com or they can call me on my cell at 757-775-7034. Thank you Jud.