Good/Different day at fletchers

[Charlie Church]

Parker and I met up around 11 today. During our 1.5 hour wait, we stalked the canal for carp with no luck. Once on the water, we were greet with hickory shad busting on the top. 

Not even kidding either. Haven't seen that before but they were pretty much everywhere on top for about an hour as long as a cloud was covering up the sun. We were able to get a bunch of fish by just casting into schools and stripping as fast as possible. Even got some good footage of takes just under the surface. 

After the fish went deep, we started seeing larger fish every now and then bust on the top. We suspected they were stripers and we were right. Parker was able to get one on a clouser. A spot change later, we found ourselves on another pretty good school of fish, this time all very large. 

Definitely a good day. The fish are still there and feeding. 

Attaching a few photos. 

[Jereme Thaxton]

Nice work Charlie, I tried for stripers yesterday throwing large baitfish patterns with no luck, glad you guys hooked up. Got into a couple schools of smaller hickory's as I hiked up from Fletchers, but it looks like you guys found some bigger ones. Saw some guys hooking catfish one after another out of a boat, bass were also on the prowl, that river is alive with action right now.

Attaching a few photos.

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[Ryan Payne]

Went out to Fletchers in the rain this morning with my Father-in-law. We experienced the same conditions that Charlie described. From 8 to 10 am, the Hickories were hitting the surface non-stop and seemingly in every direction. We used spinning rods at first, cranking green and yellow shad darts back to the boat as fast as possible. Caught close to fifty fish in 2 hours. Non-stop action. The Cormorants and Osprey were having a great time hitting fish on the surface as well.

With the fly, I couldn't get any shad interested in anything other than a swift moving dart. At first, I tried letting my full sink line do it's job.. waiting 15 to 45 seconds before stripping any line at all. But, eventually, I just replicated the spinning rod tactics on top with no very little sink and as fast-as-possible retrieval. Hooked into 3 or 4 shad on the fly within 5 to 10 feet of the surface. Most, were very close to the boat as well.

Despite the rain, it was a great morning to be out there. That said, there was a full search-and-rescue operation underway. Rumor was that a kayak full of empty beer cans was found empty and anchored near the three-sisters early this morning. Hopefully it was just left there and not the result of an accident. Just a reminder to be careful out there.

[Charlie Church]

nice man! yea i should have mentioned they were being pretty pick
towards chartreuse at first.....and then it switched to white. Picky
enough as in one person would catch fish every cast and the other
person wouldnt catch anything. The striper took a brown clouser.

[Shadfan]

Looks like a great day. To add on to the theme of aggressive, shallow
shad -- on Friday, a guy fishing near me who was casting a 3"-4"
shallow running silver crankbait for stripers caught a big hickory
(~17") on it. And it was definitely fair caught - rear treble was way
down in its mouth. I caught one like that several years ago near
Roosevelt Island on a Rat'l'trap. Sometimes they get darn
aggressive. Awesome.

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[Charlie Church]

Posted a short little video from the other day online. Of course, the
one good topwater eat we had I wasn't paying attention and was
adjusting some of the settings.... oh well. Its in there anyways.

Here is a link to it.

http://hackleheads.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/shad-on-top/