Washington Fly Fishing Forum banner

All this bait and no fish...

Tags
all and bait no this
3K views 23 replies 17 participants last post by  SalishSeaAngler 
#1 ·
Got out at 5am this morning and went to a MA13 beach at high. A few casts in I had a 20" fish(pretty sure it was a BM) follow my fly all the way to my feet practically and then give up. I didn't have a bite or a sniff for the next 3 hours... during that time I was walking along the beach and there were clouds of fry everywhere, most looked to be cutthroat fry. They were schooling up heavily and with them were schools of shiner perch. There were a bunch splashing and leaping all over the place, must've been all the way in like 8ft+ of water.
Brown Grey Beige Concrete Astronomical object
I literally saw millions of bait fish and for three hours only saw one fish... I ended up leaving cause it was just plain dead. The day before I was with a friend fishing a beach at the top of hood canal. There were no baitfish to be seen, it was pretty much dead, and right as my friend said we should leave he hooked a nice 16" cutty. It was insanely random. Again no baitfish to be seen. Yet this morning I was completely surrounded by hoards of baitfish and there weren't any cutts or salmon gorging on the buffet... was the full moon a factor? Was I at the right beach at the wrong time? I tried everything I had, poppers, fry patterns, big ol clousers, sculpins.... and nothing. Anyone have any idea as to why there were no fish picking off all these fry? I couldn't help but be a bit bewildered
 
See less See more
1
#4 ·
You will not find cutthroat fry in salt water. Cutthroat do not smolt and migrate to salt water until they have reared in fresh water to a length of (usually) 6-10 inches, a process which normally takes two years.
.
Guessing he meant chum fry.

Zach, Stonefish gives good advice. Just remember you don't need bait present to catch fish, and you're not necessarily going to catch fish just because bait is present. If a certain beach is not producing, wait for a change in something (weather, tide, etc) or move on.

Last weekend DFL and I found some fish at a number of different beaches. Only one of the beaches had baitfish present, and there weren't many signs of fish at any of the others.
 
#3 · (Edited)
Fish feed a certain times of the day and and points in the tide.
There is a good chance you happened to be there when they weren't feeding, regardless of how much bait there is.
Sometimes the bite window can be rather short. Bites can also start and stop very abruptly.
There also may not have been a lot of fish in the area.

Lots of variables when it comes to our local salt. Try not to overthink things.
I gave up a long time ago trying to figure out exactly why the tides, fish, bite, bait ect do what they do.
Have confidence, keep your fly in the water and it will happen at some point.
SF
 
#9 ·
Zack, I've experienced exactly what you're talking about numerous times. Just my random opinions here.
Chinook (probably all salmon and trout) don't care if its light out.
When bait fish are getting chased a lot they tend to move faster and make themselves more scarce.
I associate follows especially multiple ones with the bite's over or hasn't started.
Predator fish aren't as aggressive when there is tons of bait and the window is smaller. They don't have to expend as much energy to eat and wait until conditions are perfect.
You can tell a lot by watching other predators, birds and seals come to mind. They know when its going to happen.
Getting skunked on Puget Sound is better than catching a bunch of fish that recently came from a truck, in some local lake.
I can usually find a good log to sit on and just be on the beach:)
 
#12 ·
Got out at 5am this morning and went to a MA13 beach at high. A few casts in I had a 20" fish(pretty sure it was a BM) follow my fly all the way to my feet practically and then give up. I didn't have a bite or a sniff for the next 3 hours... during that time I was walking along the beach and there were clouds of fry everywhere, most looked to be cutthroat fry. They were schooling up heavily and with them were schools of shiner perch. There were a bunch splashing and leaping all over the place, must've been all the way in like 8ft+ of water. View attachment 140858 I literally saw millions of bait fish and for three hours only saw one fish... I ended up leaving cause it was just plain dead. The day before I was with a friend fishing a beach at the top of hood canal. There were no baitfish to be seen, it was pretty much dead, and right as my friend said we should leave he hooked a nice 16" cutty. It was insanely random. Again no baitfish to be seen. Yet this morning I was completely surrounded by hoards of baitfish and there weren't any cutts or salmon gorging on the buffet... was the full moon a factor? Was I at the right beach at the wrong time? I tried everything I had, poppers, fry patterns, big ol clousers, sculpins.... and nothing. Anyone have any idea as to why there were no fish picking off all these fry? I couldn't help but be a bit bewildered
Take small bites and chew real slow.
 
#13 ·
I am still only a 2-3 years into fishing SRC consistently, so take this with the proverbial grain of salt; I would definitely agree with mtskibum 16 though. If I see baitfish getting chased, it is kind of like when a hatch is happening and I see risers. I am pretty near certain I will catch fish. However, I catch a lot of fish, probably close to a majority "blind"casting to fishy water when things like tide changes and other conditions are just right for that beach at that time. Certain beaches just fish better certain times of year and certain sections of beaches fish better on an incoming, outgoing, or even slack tide regardless of whether or not obvious baitfish are present or conditions are ideal. I don't know how long you have been fishing the Sound but one thing I have learned is it takes some time to dial in even a single beach. I have had a lot of success trying a lot of different beaches at a lot of different times. I tried a beach this weekend at slack low tide with bright blue skies just because I had not before. I caught a couple of good SRC which is great but there is a good chance I will fish that beach under the same conditions in August and catch nothing...lesson learned.

Anyway, other may balk at this but there is no way I would spend 3 houra on a beach if there was nothing happening. I would be trying a different beach with different attributes until I found the right combo and found another good data point to store in the old noggen. In 15-20 years, I'll have this fishery pretty well dialed in....on at least 3 or 4 beaches :).
 
#14 ·
My only addition to the good advice of "keep your fly in the water as much as possible" is to also move around as much as possible.... there is no reason to stay at one dead beach for 3 hours.... the best days for me have always included many different beaches at many different stages of tides and just fishing new spots.... after about 30 mins with no love it is time to go.... sometimes a beach a quarter mile away on the same tide is on fire when the one before was dead as shit..... learn how to drive in waders and wading boots.... an auto shift helps in this adventure.... tight lines!!!!

didn't have a bite or a sniff for the next 3 hours
 
#17 ·
Got out at 5am this morning and went to a MA13 beach at high. A few casts in I had a 20" fish(pretty sure it was a BM) follow my fly all the way to my feet practically and then give up. I didn't have a bite or a sniff for the next 3 hours... during that time I was walking along the beach and there were clouds of fry everywhere, most looked to be cutthroat fry. They were schooling up heavily and with them were schools of shiner perch. There were a bunch splashing and leaping all over the place, must've been all the way in like 8ft+ of water. View attachment 140858 I literally saw millions of bait fish and for three hours only saw one fish... I ended up leaving cause it was just plain dead. The day before I was with a friend fishing a beach at the top of hood canal. There were no baitfish to be seen, it was pretty much dead, and right as my friend said we should leave he hooked a nice 16" cutty. It was insanely random. Again no baitfish to be seen. Yet this morning I was completely surrounded by hoards of baitfish and there weren't any cutts or salmon gorging on the buffet... was the full moon a factor? Was I at the right beach at the wrong time? I tried everything I had, poppers, fry patterns, big ol clousers, sculpins.... and nothing. Anyone have any idea as to why there were no fish picking off all these fry? I couldn't help but be a bit bewildered
Sounds like a normal outing up north, are you certain you were not up here in area 8-1?? Only difference is we don't have that much bait in the water. Hooked a fish on my third cast on Tuesday...never another hit, I finally just bagged it.
 
#20 ·
Is it also possible that with that much bait in the water the fish will after a while get satiated and just not eat anymore for a while?
^ My thoughts exactly. I recently had a very similar experience to the original poster at a beach near Seattle. The beach is typically very slow and unproductive, but it's close to home so I fish it regularly after work. That evening I ran into the biggest school of bait fish I've ever seen. "School" probably isn't even the right word - they basically filled the entire cove I was fishing. I saw them jumping everywhere from a 5 to 100 feet from shore. When I first arrived, I was so excited that I had trouble tying on my first fly. I'm pretty new to SRC fishing, but prior experience told me that jumping bait fish = feeding bigger fish. Over the next hour or so I tried everything in my box - top water gurglers, clousers, spiders, heavy SRC buggers - with zero luck. Eventually I just tucked the rod under my arm and stood there observing. After a minute or two, the school began to move past me. I stood there for probably 10 minutes while thousands upon thousands of small fish (2-4 inches - bright silver - herring?) slowly moved past me. They didn't seem to be in any particular hurry. If there were predators around, they didn't seem too worried about it.

All in all, it was a great day on the water even though I didn't land anything. It was incredible to see that much wildlife around. With that much food in the water, I'm pretty sure there were larger fish in the neighborhood, but my theory is that they were either full or my fly got lost in the crowd. It would be like hucking a single bag of Doritos into the middle of a grocery store and waiting for someone to grab it. The same thing can happen on a river if you stumble upon a hatch too late. After awhile, the fish fill up and are less interested in chasing that one weird looking bug with a clear string sticking out of its forehead.
 
#21 ·
Exactly. I used to live in Colorado. One of big events of the year is the "Mothers Day Caddis Hatch" on the Arkansas. You always would want to fish just downstream of the hatch (e.g. it would progress downriver as the days/weeks pass). Otherwise, all of the fish already exposed to them are so full that they are not as interested, plus the Doritos in the grocery store analogy is in play.

SRCs move so much, they also just simply may not have been there at that time
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top