Fished several South Puget Sound beaches with Leland yesterday.
Sort of an uncontrolled experiment in the relative efficacy of the Popper
vs. conventional wet's in raising and hooking searuns. Beautiful, sunny
day, with just enough wind to keep the surface riffled. Both of us fishing
floating lines. Leland fishing Poppers (primarily his grizzly variation) and
me fishing my, more-or-less, standard small green and white epoxy
head candlefish pattern.
The results: Lots and lots of boils, short-strikes, follows... everything
BUT solid hookups, regardless of pattern used and regardless of
retrieve, presentation, beach, section of beach, tide direction, stage of
tide, whatever! I think I ended up with a couple of fish landed (both
small cutt's) and Leland zip to hand, but probably twice or three times
as many follows. (Correct me if I'm wrong here Leland).
One final note: Some of the beaches had substantial populations of
less well known bait species, such as small rock crabs, sculpins, small
flat fish, etc. I'm thinking it might be time to do another little
experiment, this time using a sink tip (or sinking) line and some little
sculpin and crab imitations. Any thoughts out there - you South Sound
cognoscenti?
-Wes
Wes Neuenschwander
Seattle, WA
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
