First Worms of the year and other novelties!

May 15, 1999 - While fishing Follins Pond, on the Bass River, the past few days we began to encounter the first clam worm hatches of the year. The little critters began emerging about 7-7:30PM and became easy fodder for cruising stripers. The fish never became super selective to the worms as they have in season’s past probably due to the lack of hatch intensity. It would be wise to have a few worm patterns in your saltwater flybox just in case you encounter the little devils which commonly inhabit silted backwaters and salt ponds. A striper can be as selective as a brown trout during a baetis hatch when clam worms are evident in numbers, so be prepared for some challenging fishing conditions.

While were on the subject of clam worms, a new fly pattern that I am employing seems to be very successful and is simple to tie.

Tie in a red or light pink marabou tail (slightly longer than the gap of the hook), red or light pink marabou strands wrapped on as a body, and two wraps of black crystal chenille for the head. I am tying it on a size 4 Tiemco 811S hook so keep your flies small, clam worm are only 2-3 centimeters in length on average. The use of marabou for the body rather than the more common materials seems to give the fly a more lifelike appearance when wet. This pattern is best fished dead drift, similar to the nymphing tactics you would employ for trout in a river. If you do impart some action to the fly, do it in a subtle way, the worms are not super-fast swimmers and tend to dawdle a bit in faster current.

Another bizarre event worthy of mention was the presence of substantial numbers of hickory shad in the river, an occurrence I have never witnessed with this intensity in thirty years of fishing the cape. The shad took up feeding stations along current tongues and were gorging themselves on drifting clam worms much like the "smutting" rises of trout. This made fishing for stripers, which were present among the gorging shad, interesting to say the least, as the little guys would often beat the stripers to the punch.

Oh, well . Did manage to secure the first keepers of the year while all this action was occurring. We theorized that groups of larger fished moved into the system in pursuit of the shad, not the worms, silversides and shrimp that commonly reside in the pond.

On other fronts, the entire Cape is in full swing right now with keeper size fish being reported from just about every imaginable area with the exception of surf locations. Just got the first reliable report of slammer blues being taken in skinny water from Popponesset gut to the Cotuit openings with larger bass also obliging. I wouldn’t be surprised to see bluefish showing up along the Chatham shore within a few days, with Ridgevale and Hardings Beaches likely interception points.

All hell is breaking loose, it’s beginning to look like this years crop of migrants will fulfill our expectations, so grab a fly rod and join in the fun, the next six to eight weeks should be the most productive fishing of the entire season.

Good fishing and safe wading,

JB