S6, Ep 117: Navigating the Rough Waters: Captain David Blinken on Fall Fishing Conditions

Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the articulate fly.

And we're back with another on the salt with Captain David Blinken.

David, how are you?

I'm great, Marvin.

How are you doing today?

As always, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble.

And I know you're temporarily back in New Jersey, but you've been on the water quite a bit recently.

Yeah.

I mean, four days on, but, boy, we had a rough two weeks with northeast wind.

It just has been relentless.

Kept a majority of us off the water.

Unless we got a chance to sneak in some quiet backwaters that's protected.

Otherwise, it's.

It's been, uh, been kind of a brutal September.

I'm glad we're in October now.

Yeah.

And were those kind of like, you know, advanced winds of some of the hurricane activity we've had down here in the southeast?

You know, really what it is.

It's.

It's.

It wasn't that, actually.

We had, you know, we had a little bit of cloudiness and drizzling us from the hurricanes, but I.

What it really is is we had a stagnant frontal system and nothing coming out of the west to push it away.

So just these little lows were coming up the coast, and when they do that, they throw northeast wind back at us.

And unfortunately, the northeast winds were rather strong, in fact, too strong to go fishing in.

Well, that's a bummer.

But you've managed to get out.

Have you found the false albacore?

Well, I know we have pulse albicorn, central Long island sound, which is a little out of my range.

And again, we have them eight to 10 miles offshore, and they're up in New England.

They're everywhere but Montauk and eastern Long island, surprisingly.

But hopefully that'll change and they'll show up.

But we've got some stripers around and some bluefish, and we had a nice little theme last week where we had striped bass and bluefin tuna mixed together, and that was kind of fun to watch.

Oh, well, neat.

I've got an interesting question for you, as we kind of, you know, Brenner's eager.

He wants to get to wintertime, right.

I'm just happy to get to fall and have the humidity drop out and maybe get out and get on the water.

But he was curious.

If you say traditionally, are fishing a floating line in the wintertime kind of like you would for trout?

Do you need to think about fishing deeper in the water column?

Because the fish are going to basically go deeper, and the floaters not going to get to them.

Well, you know, first of all, depends on where you're fishing, when you're fishing, the species you're fishing for.

So why don't I just use striped bass, an example.

Very often they're migratory, but some striped bass do stick around.

And of course, on those warmer winter days, they're going to be more active than they are in the colder winter days.

Um, and on those warmer winter days, they may travel closer to the edges where you don't have to fish quite as deep.

But, um, if you do want to fish them in the water's cold, you probably have to start thinking about sinking lines, identifying the fish with sonar.

And if you're walking, um, if you're walking a waterway and you're walking the deep water edge, you know, you just have to kind of blind cast and slowly retrieve, you know, with the sinking line.

But if you're lucky enough to be walking an edge in the winter where the water is warmed up a bit, you know, those fish might, those fish might come up along the edges.

And in that case, you actually, you know, if it's water that's under 3ft deep, you can actually use a floating one.

So you have to think situationally.

Now, if, for example, you're fishing, let's say, let's go tropical in the winter, you might be fishing for bonefish.

It could be a cold day in January.

You know, the bonefish may leave the flats for deeper water, but then they're hard to locate.

But when they do come back up on the flats, they're, they're generally going to be in shallow water.

So those kind of wood, your conditions, you know, give you certainly an advantage using floating line.

You know, it's different.

Like, you know, um, my freshwater friends who, who fish trout in the winter, very often, you know, trout gather big pods in the winter and you've got to locate where those pods are and then you fish to them, you know, nymphing, you know, either, you know, not very often dry fly, but, you know, you're fishing in close to the bottom and just bumping it along.

But in, in saltwater, you know, we don't get that advantage.

The fish are always on the move.

They don't gather in one or two particular places.

They're, they're moving around and I, and many, many times they're trying to follow what bait there may be available to them.

So, um.

No, I hope that's a help.

Yeah.

And so just to kind of help educate me on the saltwater side.

So you know, like, say, trout in the wintertime, they're generally going to be in deep, slow water, maybe like where that are spring fed.

Um, but like, if you have stripers that are, you know, overwintering where you are, they basically trying to find kind of slow, deep spots that are not super affected by the tide of they.

May be finding those slow, deep spots very often.

What they do is theyll swim up a creek into an impoundment where the water virtually isnt moving at all.

It may go up and down lightly with the tide, but they can be in very still water.

And its those warmer days in the winter where you can take advantage of those fish and theyll move around it, you know, overcast or maybe partly sunny days.

On the really, really cold days, they're going to be almost in hibernation type state where they're going to be very, very sluggish and barely moving.

And in order to get them to eat a fly, you literally have to pull it right by their nose.

So it takes, it takes a lot of effort in that case, Evan.

Yeah.

And so what's the forage generally, in terms?

Is it, you know, eels, crabs, bait fish?

What is the kind of normal winter forage for stripers that overwinter?

It certainly could be little crabs.

It could be certain types of bait fish, winter over.

It could be, you know, it could be small herring, it could be spearing, you know, fish like that.

There are some species of shrimp that are around all winter long and other things that we don't even know exist.

But the cool thing about fish, stripers and all fish is they take advantage of what's in front of them.

They're opportunistic feeders, so in the winter, when there's less food, we can kind of go for that opportunistic feeding attitude that fish naturally carry with them.

So just getting something by them, maybe pulling a clouds or minnow across the bottom very slowly, or a deceiver type fly, it doesn't necessarily have to be big, but it needs to certainly attract their attention.

So maybe, you know, olive over white or chartreuse over white might work really well, you know, both in a clouds or a deceiver type pattern.

But I would definitely, for stripers, I try to fish as well in the water column as I could.

It doesn't mean they won't come up and even low in the water column when it's 3ft of water, you know, get it closer to the bottom.

So, so, you know, but take advantage of warm days in winter, uh, just like we do, you know, just like you might do trout fishing, those days are going to certainly, um, give you, uh, better opportunities than the coldest days where, frankly, I don't even want to be out there.

My guides are freezing up.

Uh, I feel like I should be skiing.

Fair enough.

And, you know, folks, we love questions on the articulate fly.

You can email me or dm me on social media.

As always, say, let's make David's life a little bit easier.

And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag.

And we enter in a drawing for a royal wolf line of your choice.

And, you know, David, before I let you go, I think the last time we spoke, you were trying to fill one or two spots on maybe a November trip down to Mexico.

And you want to let folks know how to get on the boat and all that kind of good stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

November 9 through 14, fishing the 10th through the 13th.

I have a tarpon trip going to campinche to fish, juvenile tarpon and some baby tarpon.

So these fish range in size from five to that time of year, 30, 40 pounds.

And, you know, it's a wonderful trip I'm hosting.

It would love to have anybody who wants to come along and join a very chill group of people to have some wonderful tarpon fishing and some of the best mexican food you can imagine in Campiche.

Got it.

And I know, I guess your guide season, you're getting ready to probably start waxing the skis here not too long in the future, right?

Well, I got.

I have about five weeks to go, and then.

And then I head to Mexico.

Then I'll be working with the ski school, and then I have another trip going to Mexico in December.

And then after that trip, it's going to be all skiing all the time until April.

Well, there you go.

Well, listen, folks, as I always say, you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few tight lines, everybody.

Tight lines.

David, tight lines.

Marvin.