Ipswich River .. any insight?

[Tintin]

Anyone willing to give any insight into schoolie fishing on the Ipswich?

If kayaking down with the tide .. where to put in, how far out to drift, general technique/patterns?

I wanted to try something different than throwing pellet flies to the stockies on my local rivers.

You can contact me directly at david.grigglestone@gmail.com

thanks, Tintin

[s2ary]

Hey Tintin,

The rule of thumb with early season schoolies is to 'seek thee out the warm water'.

Early season fish will slid into marshes and mud flats on the afternoon tides. Solar radiation is absorbed by the dark soils and as the afternoon tides floods the area the water then absorbs the warmth out of the soils.

The most reliable patterns are to target the fish at gauntlets on the out going tide.

Also you can try the flats on an incoming, if you have the right marsh that can be awesome, but more likely than not the flats will be slow until later in the year. It all depends on the location, some, like the broad large flats on the cape are hot, while others like the smaller side flats are slow.

Remember the fish are a little pissy until the water hits 50 so bring a thermometer and adjust. Outside the water is between 47-49 degrees, but up in the marshes the temps are varying between 57.7 at Adams Point to the mid to lower 50's in smaller marshes.

A key secrete I've always had good luck with is to key on large shallow estuaries that have good bait fish populations. The success ratio is large surface area for thermal absorption with a narrower tidal prism. The fishing window is narrow, but it is a red hot early bite. As the season progress it becomes less important.

The backside of pavillion has a large tidal basin, so maybe start there. Also the lower parts of the river are pretty flat like so drag a fly as you paddle up stream throwing a half dozen casts into each tributary mouth.

Let us know how you do. :)

[Tintin]

So finally got to take this trip, with my fishing buddy Mike.

Borrowed a kayak with easy in/out, but could not compete with Mike's sit-on-top with all the gadgets ;)

Mike tied a ton a flies .. including some interesting crab imitations.

We got out on the water (launched from Pavilion) about 7:00am for the incoming tide and headed towards the beach at the mouth below Cranes Castle. Plenty of bird activity and sure enough a school of stripers feeding .. but what an eye opener for me .. managed to get amongst the fish briefly, but was fighting the rushing tide the whole time. I had not tried the setup I had on my 7wt rod (clouser, weighted leader) ahead of time and the combination of wind, tide and lack of experience saw me get very few casts .. so never got a hookup. Within 30 mins of this I was exhausted and frustrated. Mike had a couple of hits but no hookups. We both agreed we couldn't fight both the tide and motor boats so decided to drift back into the Ipswich mouth.

Saw a few fish feeding in shallow water just ahead of some rips as we headed in and tried our luck there, but again no joy.

Then drifted into the marshes as it reached high tide. This time I got a better look at some fish .. one that was around the 30 inch mark ambled in behind my eel pattern, but I ran out of line to strip and it got spooked (learned later that sometimes helps to just let the fly drop at that stage). Further up had my closest hookup, but I'm guessing the fish just had hold of the tail of the fly (come on man, strippers are supposed to hit the front!) .. it was a large schoolie .. really didn't see many small fish (that we could tell).

Mike had a couple of takes but nothing to show for it.

On the outbound tide we really did not manage to find fish. Ended up on the rocks in the middle of the mouth. Even the motor boat guys didn't catch much.

So I've got to put this down to inexperience; I learned a ton (first fly fishing kayak trip .. let alone ocean fly fishing), have a better idea of what setup to use another time, got a great workout and just had fun mucking around in a kayak.

Thanks for tying all the flies Mike .. oh and Mike recorded his route on his GPS .. don't get dizzy looking at the attached route :)

Mike .. add any other details you'd like.

Tintin

[BugChucka]

Great report, that kayak route looks painfully optimistic lol

[Relheok]

No kidding, looks like a workout and a half...

[s2ary]

Fishing out of a Kayak with the fly rod is in a class by itself, and it is strangely addicting. Every time I say I'm done, I go 180 degrees with even greater compassion. I can't describe it.

The only two things I can say is there is a lot going on at once, and trying to keep it all together is hard. Most of the people you hear about who fish from a yak actually troll or use hardware.

The other great discovery that helped me a lot was to down size my flies. When I'm in a yak I use more delicate flies; Flatwings, Bucktails, small clousers and sparse deceivers.

It only takes one big fish to change your life.

[rusty mustads]

... and two will ruin it! ;)

[mhackney]

I'm "Mike". Good write up Dave! The GPS trace is dizzying to look at. I think it was 7.3 miles total. It was a good workout for sure. I think by mid day we were starting to get the hang of actually casting from the yak and maintaining position, etc. After looking at some other posts on NewEnglandKayakFishing.com, it looks like we were not the only ones getting skunked this weekend.

cheers,
Michael

[wardy]

If you’re still interested in fishing from a kayak in Ipswich, get a map and look for Eagle Hill. It has a Town landing but you can park out on the cause way. Paddle out straight across from the landing. Their you'll find a maze of marsh channels. Working towards the front you'll find a deep channel cutting between the marsh bank and a sand bar. Excellent back estuary fishing and very kayak friendly fishing.