Sincerely,

 

 

Mako 2201 Inshore Bay

Zonker Worm Fly

Pro Staff- Foxboro, MA

Saltwater Pro Team

The following points are taken from a presentation I give on fishing the Cinder Worm hatch. It's by no means a complete list of things you need to know but it offers some thoughts on the key points that may assist you in understanding this wonderful fishery and the truly unique opportunity it presents for those of us who like to "dry fly" fish in salt water. Every May and Early June we are blessed with five to six weeks of fishing for stripers in shallow water using top-water patterns that simulate cinder worms.

• This is a fly rod & light spin fishery- leave the goofy plugs and heavy rods at home 
•  It's best to use small boat rather than wade fishing, you will significantly increase your odds of success 
•  Wading access in some ponds is pretty good, but fish can be spread out, bring a spinner to reach fish out of fly rod range 
•  Get to the pond about 3:30 pm and begin scouting coves for high circling gulls/terns 
•  Birds are not always the tip-off that the worm hatch has started. You may find worms first! 
•  Bring binoculars to search for birds diving, looping and sitting on the water eating worms 
•  Utilize a drift sock (drogue) to slow the drift of your vessel. This will keep you in the productive zone 
•  Worm emergences build slowly. If you find worms, it's only a matter of time before the bass will  
•  Do not drift your vessel into rising fish, try to stay on the fringe by anchoring if windy 
•  FOG can be a problem in May and early June- if boating, bring a handheld GPS or at least a compass 
•  If boating, get to pond early and set shallow water way points outlining edges and sandbars
•  Bring extra batteries for your handheld GPS. If lost in fog follow most northerly headings will lead you to the inhabited areas of the pond. Do not head south! 
•  If in paddle boats, use a mast with a flag so you are more visible to boats. Per Coast Guard regulations all vessels must have lights
•  If you use salmon or bronze hooks when tying your worm patterns, bring a freshwater jug for rinsing to help prevent corrosion to the hooks
•  When approaching feeding areas, cut main engine early and use your trolling motor or push pole to enter the feeding zone
•  If power boating, slow when nearing paddle craft- leave feeding areas slowly with no wake
• If someone is giving advice on how to fish the worm hatch, make sure you find out about their level of PERSONAL experience! There are a lot of "experts" who don't know what they are talking about.

   

 

If you plan on fishing the Rhode Island Cinder Worm Hatch over the next five or six weeks the following tips may assist you in being more successful in your wade fishing and boat outings.   

The Cinder Worm Hatch in a normal year can last five to six weeks and is mostly an everyday occurrence. These fish are targeted in Quonnie Pond, Ninigret Pond, Pt. Judith Pond, Potter Pond and a variety of coves in Narragansett Bay (and probably many other spots that some of you may already know about).  

• Shallowest, muddiest and sunniest coves will be the first to have worms 
• There is limited wading areas in most ponds- bring a boat, any kind of boat to improve your odds 
• Generally the activity is from about 4:30 pm to dark - some days the emergence is extremely light or it may not happen until weather conditions improve (cold fronts can bring the hatch to a standstill) 
•  Moon and Tide stages are mostly unimportant- my advice is "Go When You Can"
•  Cold & prolonged rain spells may temporarily slow or shut down the hatch
•  Fish sub-surface streamers while awaiting worm emergence to start
•  Fishing 2-3 different flies is good tactic- dropper & terminal pattern
•  Fishing darker flies as light disappears works well
• Use the "Strip Strike" and not the traditional "Trout Set" 
•  Intermediate lines are a good alternative where there is not much grass near the bottom and fish are not showing 
•  Wading and boating etiquette is appropriate at all times
• You likely will not see bass swirling right away as worms emerge- hang in there
•  Stay positioned where worms emerge- bass will come
•  Watch other boats & look for bird activity to help locate action- use binoculars
•  Bass swirls will begin sporadically and increase gradually
•  As emergence builds- swirls increase with difficulty hooking up. Re-position boat to fringe areas
•  Minimize boat noise- paddle, pole or use trolling motor to relocate
•  Motor vessels may not give rights to paddlers because of the "idiot factor" or they cannot see you
•  Casts should be long. Use primarily floating lines. Maximize fly time in water
•  Cast beyond the swirls. Lead fish if you see a pattern to their feeding behavior
•  Retrieve using 3" crawls- imitate the natural's swimming characteristics- no rapid long strips
•  Try a two-handed retrieve, but very slow retrieves  
•  Try dead drifting your fly pattern
•  Attempt to imitate color & size of worms. Stock many patterns in different colors and sizes
•  Change patterns- don't stay with something that's not working
•  Change to darker flies as you lose light.  I have lots of success fishing black flies as sky darkens
•  Fish with 2 or 3 fly different patterns. Tie on the trailer fly using tippet tied to hook bend
•  Close range fish?- "Dapping" technique works great. Simulate the swimming pattern of the naturals 
•  Rod tip always low to the surface or in water, with NO slack line
•  During a heavy worm emergence fish the edges- or move to area with lower concentrations of bait 
• The fleet will invade your turf if they see your rods bent and if you whoop and holler- Be cool!
• Use weed-less fly patterns if excessive weedy conditions exist 
• Always remove all grass from fly and tippet- If you hear a "flag" on your backcast- cast it off
• Leave tag ends of joined tippet sections- they will help pick up grass so your hook won't 
• If you fish from a boat you should have a GPS available. Fog can be a problem making it difficult to find your way back to the launch site
• Bring a waterproof cell phone to stay in touch with fellow anglers or to call for assistance 

This is more like a Martha Stewart helping hint than your traditional newsletter article, but it is what it is. Being a saltwater angler first, and a fishing guide second, I am constantly plagued by "frozen zippers" on my gear bags, tackle bags, rod tubes, fishing jackets- on and on. The effects of saltwater will in no time encrust a metal or plastic zipper and render it locked. I have destroyed many zippers trying to free them by all means gentle and persuasive and unless I am willing to spend hours with boiling water, pliers, WD-40, prayer, voodoo... my restoration efforts are only effective half the time, at best. I have, however, found a great solution apart from lubricating these blasted things every other day...who the heck has time for that? 

 

Maintenance:

Once the zipper-head is free and runs along the track smoothly, I apply beeswax to the track. Beeswax is not your average paraffin candle wax. Beeswax is a natural wax secreted by honey bees. I buy mine in cake form at West Marine- $12 (http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?productId=18524&catalogId=10001&langId=-1&storeId=11151&storeNum=50045&subdeptNum=50110&classNum=50113#.UH2eUWfhe4Y)

Church candles (votive candles) are oftentimes made of beeswax and may be available through your place of worship (don't steal them!...and go to church while you're at it- it'll probably do you good and improve your catch rate.)  Look around, you'll find a source. I take the wax cake and rub it back and forth on the zipper track vigorously, the heat generated by the friction softens the wax and it penetrates into the spaces between the zipper teeth and provides a clean, non-staining, non-toxic, and slippery quality that is very durable. If you reapply the wax every few weeks you should never have a problem with frozen zippers again.

 

As anglers we need to continuously protect and maintain our rods, reels, lines, boats etc., from the effects of the salt environment. Zippers are extremely prone to freezing and hopefully these tips will work for you.

 

Good Luck-

Martha  

 

When angling in salt water, in my view not much beats catching any fish on a fly rod. Yeah, I will use a spinning rod if I must to achieve distance or to give my casting arm some well needed rest, or if I have developed mid or late-season lateral epicondylitis (tennis elbow). A spinning rod comes in handy when I am fishing solo from my boat and need to do perform tricky maneuvering around structure or in heavy water, or if tying to get a shot at a 40 mph fleeing Albie while driving the boat.
As for surfcasting- to each his own and I don't mean to sound elitist, but in my view, surfcasting ranks right up there with watching long distance sailboat races from shore. No, from where I sit a fly rod puts a real challenge into the game. No telephone pole, no goofy plastic baits and clunky plugs...but personally tied fly patterns imitating the natural bait, presented with a 9ft, 9weight, 3 1/4 ounce fly rod. Pure excitement when you see the fly line go tight, strip-strike the hook home, feel the weight of the fish, watch the rod arc forward and feel the head shakes telegraphed through the line into the rod and into your wrist. Wow!

1963

My father was a spin fisherman, and also fished with bait. There was nothing wrong with that, and in most cases spin fishing and threading a night crawler onto an Eagle Claw hook is how most of us started fishing. For me there was no other way to fish. Several copies of Field & Stream magazine were always laying about the house, usually in the John, and I clearly recall images of an angler using a fly rod and standing in a western stream, or floating in a canoe on the Allaghash River in Maine. These were places that for me were way beyond my world.

My father was a businessman, and as a youth it felt at times like I was a military brat. It seemed that as a family we no sooner settled into a new community where I had developed some pals and got to know the local fishing holes, when we were soon packing up and moving off to someplace new because dad was once again changing jobs. I will say this however, as much a disappointment as it was to pick up stakes and relocate, each time we did so it was always to a better place. For me that meant better places to fish. Later while I was in high school we lived on a lake in north-central Massachusetts that provided great ice fishing in the winter and absolutely wonderful largemouth bass fishing in the warmer months. I had become adept at locating and catching bass with a spinning rod. I would stay out way past dark in my wooden rowboat that leaked like a sieve, many times on the opposite end of the lake from where we lived. (I lost track of how many times the outboard motor crapped-out requiring the long row home).  I loved the smell of the water, the lilies , the pine trees on Little Lizard Island and the groan of croaking bullfrogs. God what sweet memories. 

I swam a lot in that lake and even today when I go swimming, I keep my head above the water line as if I was still looking out for tree stumps, muskrats, snapping turtles and water snakes. I would don a mask, snorkel and fins and dive among the stumps, weeds and brush piles and in so doing I would find where the big bass lay, and then later I would return and catch them.

After high school I was off to college and getting involved in competitive sports, parties, fraternity life, with some studying mixed in for good measure, but no field sports. Following graduation my passion turned to rock and ice climbing and mountaineering, golf and then competitive sailing. I married, began a career, and had a family and during most of those years fishing was never on my radar, it was as if it had never been a part of me.

It was about the time I turned forty-five when Jim Mullen, a dear friend called one day and suggested we go fishing. It sounded great but frankly, a bit foreign, it had been so long. Following a quick trip to the fishing department of a big box store to re-supply, we launched his canoe and paddled to a small island on the north side of Worden's Pond in Rhode Island where we anchored the boat and wet-waded a long and shallow sandbar. After several blind casts with my $20 spinning rod/reel combo, I tied into a big Northern Pike. He stayed buttoned but only for a sweet few seconds before his razor-sharp teeth severed my line. Within those fleeting moments I experienced once again the thrill of fighting a fish. I felt that familiar pull, the head shaking vibrations that telegraphed through the rod and into my wrist, and the sight of a crescent mirror leaping above the eel grass. It was pure exhilaration. I was back home. 

So it was, there on that sandbar, twenty some odd years ago, with my best friend, who has since left this world, that my clock was turned back to a much simpler time. Now, in the midst of what has become my retirement fishing business, for a couple of days every summer I leave behind my modern entrapments- the fancy boat, the fly rods made of space age materials and reels that cost more than my annual college tuition, the fishing designer-wear, together with the fishing guide's disposition.  I return to a much simpler time to once again fish as a youth- in a simple row boat, using an inexpensive spinning rod and reel, and carrying a plastic box containing a few Fred Arbogast classics.

Thanks Dad and Jim, you have enriched my life.  

     

I hope this newsletter contained information of interest to you and again, I welcome input for future topics you may be interested in knowing more about. OK northeast U.S. fly fishers, it's time to rock n roll!
 

My best,

 

 www.SkinnyWaterChartersRI.com
info@SkinnyWaterChartersRI.com