Until today, I had only tubed a couple of lakes, where you have only the wind to contend with, as a consideration for route planning. In the bay, you have the wind and the tide. The tidal swing is the key, in my opinion, to bay fishing. In a tube it both helps and hurts. It helps catch fish and cover area. But unless you're tubing point to point, it can make resetting a drift or getting back to your launch spot a real chore. My knees were feeling it as I was kicking back to the beach today.
I stepped in the water at 7:15 a.m., a little before the tide was to turn to incoming - moving into the bay. I kicked around, trying to decide where to set up, and how to plan for the tidal flow. I figured I'd just fish around, then once the tide was coming up for an hour or so, I'd go back to the "uphill" side of the boat moorings and ride the tide to the bridge pilings. I'd caught my personal-best spottie off of piling number 4 a few years back, on the last cast of a skiff rental period. So I never pass up the chance to make a few casts at the base of the pilings.
This morning, however, the wind also came up a little earlier than expected, and was blowing with the tide. This makes for a fast downwind drift, and a long upwind kick to reset. I made a short drift and picked up a few fish. But after a few fish and a snag and retie, I was well out of position, and kicked toward the pilings to make a few casts, and then reset the drift. I noticed the pilings had warnings about getting within 75 feet painted on them since I last fished around there.
After a few casts, I made the long kick "uptide" to set up a long drift. Kicking against the wind and tide can be very slow going, and unfortunately, it's not good fishing time either. When fishing the bay, you want to retrieve from the direction which the tide is coming. Partly because that's the direction from which food will be coming, and partly because you want the fly on the bottom where the spotted bass are. When you kick into the tide it's like letting your line flutter in the wind. The tide, and your movement combine to hang your fly in the water column. I didn't get so much as a bite on this long hard kick back uptide.
Once I got all the way to the eastern edge of the moorings, I swung a 180, cast into the oncoming tide, and started the drift back toward piling number 8. The wind had picked up, not too much, but so had the tide (in a 6-hour tide, the middle two hours have the fastest flow). I picked up a couple spotties, then snagged my fly, and lost it, so I tied on a Tim Borski Haystack, a tarpon fly I'd tied at home. Immediately I hooked a hard-fighting spottie of a respectable size. He really put up an outsized tussle. I've been fishing large mouth bass and bluegill so much this summer, I forgot the fight a little spotted bass will put up.
In the meantime, I'm moving pretty swiftly towards the bridge, and as fast as the drift started, I was in a spot where I had to decide to fight the current again or try something different. I thought, I'd work from piling 8 up to 4, making casts at the bases, and then decide from there.
I picked up a couple fish, one good one, at least it looked good at the time, the pics don't really translate too well, and decided around 11:30 to pack it in and find something to eat. I didn't pick up anything between the pilings and the launch spot, but was relieved just to be back on land, and not fighting the wind and tide anymore.
End count was 9 spotted bay bass, all but two on a saltwater version of a woolly bugger, the two largest both came on a Borski haystack. Good time on the water.
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