Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 69: Heatwaves and Topwater Tactics with Captain David Blinken

Transcript

S6, Ep 69: Heatwaves and Topwater Tactics with Captain David Blinken · The Articulate Fly

• 0:03
  Marvin: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly,
• 0:06
  Marvin: and we're back with another On the Salt with Captain David Blinken. David, how are you?
• 0:11
  David: I'm great, Marvin. I'm starting to melt away a little in all this heat,
• 0:16
  David: but I think I'll be around for the heat wave to break.
• 0:19
  Marvin: Yeah, it's interesting. You're cooler out on Long Island than you are down here
• 0:23
  Marvin: in the Carolinas, but the bummer for you is you've had a lot of wind,
• 0:27
  Marvin: and so you probably are having a little bit of withdrawal because you haven't
• 0:29
  Marvin: been able to get out on the water.
• 0:31
  David: Yeah, it's been, it's, last week was rough. We were only able to fish certain
• 0:36
  David: tides, and then the wind would just kick in big time.
• 0:39
  David: And now the past two days, it's been blowing anywhere from 20 to 35 miles an hour.
• 0:44
  David: So that's pretty much kept us on the beach, as they say.
• 0:48
  Marvin: Yeah, that's a bummer. What do you expect to see when you get out on the water in the next day or so?
• 0:53
  David: Well, you know, the fish have kind of had a few days off, right?
• 0:57
  David: So I'm hoping to find some stripers in shallow water.
• 1:00
  David: I think I'll probably be fishing crustacean patterns because there hasn't been a lot of bait in the bay.
• 1:09
  David: So little mantis shrimp patterns and little crabs and little green and blue claws, like size twos.
• 1:18
  Marvin: Yeah, it's funny. It makes me think about going to the beach as a kid and catching
• 1:21
  Marvin: those things in buckets.
• 1:24
  David: Oh, yeah. I mean, I used to take my kids to the beach and we would dig up mole
• 1:28
  David: crabs and throw them in a bucket and they'd play with them and then we'd release them back.
• 1:32
  David: And of course, kids have a great fun with mole crabs because they don't bite.
• 1:38
  David: They just kind of scurry around. They're kind of fun.
• 1:40
  Marvin: Yeah, it's neat stuff. Yeah, it's funny. I always think of myself as more of
• 1:45
  Marvin: a mountain person than a beach person.
• 1:47
  Marvin: But then every time I go to the beach, I really like it and say I should do more of that.
• 1:52
  David: Yeah, I love it. But I love the mountains and the beach, but the beach certainly in the summer.
• 1:57
  David: And, you know, you never know what you're going to see when you're hanging out
• 2:00
  David: in the folding chair or staring out at the water.
• 2:04
  Marvin: Hopefully a gin and tonic would be what you would see. That would be my call.
• 2:08
  David: Yeah, that or a school of stripers.
• 2:10
  Marvin: There you go. Well, we've got a question for you from Brenner,
• 2:13
  Marvin: and he wanted to get your thoughts, David, on your favorite topwater flies and
• 2:17
  Marvin: the favorite species you like to target with those flies.
• 2:21
  David: Well, I think, you know, there's a whole bunch of topwater flies.
• 2:25
  David: You know, you've got Boilermakers and Gurglers and Creaseflies and stuff like that.
• 2:30
  David: But I'm really a big fan of JetGuard's H-Fly, the Gurgler.
• 2:37
  David: Um and it it casts really easily it makes a lot of commotion it stays on top beautifully,
• 2:45
  David: and uh over the years i've actually modified it
• 2:48
  David: started tying it slightly differently just to
• 2:52
  David: make it a little more robust and to make it float a little better and
• 2:55
  David: where i can use bigger hooks so that's kind of
• 2:58
  David: my go-to fly um and maybe
• 3:02
  David: i'll send you a picture of it uh for for uh
• 3:05
  David: further scrutiny um and and
• 3:08
  David: i really there's two species of
• 3:11
  David: fish i love throwing these things that i mean i like throwing it everything
• 3:15
  David: but uh if i have my druthers um i want to throw them at big bluefish because
• 3:20
  David: uh nothing nothing attacks uh nothing attacks uh topwater like bluefish there
• 3:27
  David: it's just like an out-of-body experience when they hit those flies eyes.
• 3:31
  David: They come so hard at them that they're sometimes two feet out of the water on
• 3:36
  David: the strike. It's really exciting.
• 3:38
  Marvin: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 3:40
  David: And then another fish I love throwing garglars at is tarpon.
• 3:45
  David: And you fish them very differently. With the tarpon, you just kind of literally
• 3:49
  David: pull them through the water along the edges of mangroves, and they just leave a little view wake.
• 3:55
  David: And it's just enough to make the tarpon kind of glide up behind them.
• 3:58
  David: And if they're in in the right mood, they'll smash it.
• 4:01
  David: And most of the time they just come up behind it like a giant trout and they just suck them down.
• 4:06
  David: You'll just see a hole in the water where the tarpon's mouth suddenly opened
• 4:10
  David: up. It's really quite exciting.
• 4:13
  Marvin: And so back on the bluefish, you know, when you're fishing those or you,
• 4:16
  Marvin: you know, you've got the bait busting, do you just kind of throw it in there and strip it out?
• 4:20
  Marvin: Is the fly larger than kind of what you think the naturals are?
• 4:23
  Marvin: Kind of what's the tactic there?
• 4:24
  David: Well i'll tell you something really interesting you
• 4:27
  David: know with bluefish we have them in different in different
• 4:30
  David: areas sometimes we have bluefish on the flats and they're
• 4:33
  David: just kind of daisy chaining or swimming around in strings so we're just throwing
• 4:38
  David: it out in front of them or along the edge of a daisy chain and just um you know
• 4:43
  David: sort of moderately stripping them back so the fly makes commotion but you're
• 4:49
  David: not ripping it so fast that you're stealing taking it away from the
• 4:52
  David: fish um and then other times you
• 4:56
  David: know you're throwing it into boils you know where they're just
• 4:59
  David: on top and they're raging and they're eating a ton of bait and you just kind
• 5:02
  David: of flop it in there and you can almost dead drift it in in those situations
• 5:06
  David: and they'll come and smash it off the top so you know it's always in in all
• 5:11
  David: the fishing it's always very situational you know and you just have to adapt
• 5:14
  David: and change to uh whatever's whatever the fish are doing yeah.
• 5:19
  Marvin: Very very neat and you And you know, folks, we love questions at The Articulate Fly.
• 5:23
  Marvin: Email me or DM me, or if you want to hear your question being read on the podcast,
• 5:28
  Marvin: if you go to the podcast link at thearticulatefly.com, you can actually record
• 5:32
  Marvin: your question, and we can actually drop it in and people can hear it.
• 5:35
  Marvin: So if that interests you, you can do that. We love questions.
• 5:38
  Marvin: If we use your question, I will send you some Articulate Fly swag,
• 5:41
  Marvin: and then we're going to have a drawing at the end of the season for these,
• 5:44
  Marvin: and the winner is going to get the Royal Wolf line of their choice.
• 5:47
  Marvin: And I just love Royal Wolf lines.
• 5:50
  David: Oh, yeah. I love them, too. I've had a chance to use many different lines.
• 5:55
  David: And the one thing in sight water that you never want happening is a line to
• 6:00
  David: get kind of coily or have what we call memory.
• 6:02
  David: And one of the great things about the Royal Wolf lines are they just have no memory at all.
• 6:07
  David: You can pull it off a reel after 10 days and it'll cast just like it had been
• 6:11
  David: stretched. It's awesome. Yeah.
• 6:13
  Marvin: And I know you've got the tropical lines. I've got the triangle taper for trout,
• 6:17
  Marvin: and I just think they're great for roll casting and mending and managing line.
• 6:20
  David: Yeah, I love the Bermuda shorts, but when I am trout fishing,
• 6:24
  David: I definitely have my triangle taper.
• 6:26
  David: And they also do a shooting head version of it too, which is really wonderful.
• 6:33
  David: People should go on Royal Wolf's website and see what they got. It's pretty cool stuff.
• 6:37
  Marvin: Yeah, and I'll drop a link to their website in the show notes.
• 6:40
  Marvin: And David, I know you've got a trip that you're trying to find a couple more
• 6:44
  Marvin: folks for in August to Mexico, but then you've got other trips going on and
• 6:47
  Marvin: guiding to you. You want to let folks know a little bit about that?
• 6:50
  David: Well, let's see. The Mexico trip, I have a couple of openings for August 2nd.
• 6:54
  David: If anyone wants to join us, it's going to be me and the writer Steve Ramirez
• 6:59
  David: is going to be joining me.
• 7:01
  David: And we've got a couple spots open to tarpon fish for four days in Campeche,
• 7:05
  David: departing August 2nd and returning August 7th.
• 7:09
  David: It's four days, and it's prime time down there for tarpon.
• 7:12
  David: And it's, uh, during the rainy season, it only rains after four in the afternoon,
• 7:17
  David: but a lot of water gets, uh, stored up in the mangroves and flushes out and
• 7:21
  David: keeps the tarpon, uh, on the outside of the mangroves, which makes it a lot of fun to go fishing.
• 7:26
  Marvin: Yeah. And, uh, you got to get breakfast at five in the morning and be ready to go, right?
• 7:31
  David: Oh, definitely. We're having breakfast five, five 30 and, uh,
• 7:34
  David: and, and we're out, we're hopefully, you know, hooking up the first fish by 6 30 AM.
• 7:39
  Marvin: Yeah. And so, but you've got other trips kind of as we kind of move deeper into
• 7:42
  Marvin: the season as well, right?
• 7:45
  David: Well, I'll be guiding Martha's Vineyard for a couple of weeks starting the 12th
• 7:51
  David: of August, and I'll be there until the 24th.
• 7:55
  David: And I've got another trip going to Mexico in November where I think I have one slot open.
• 8:01
  David: The December trip is sold out. And, you know, if people are interested in going
• 8:05
  David: to Belize in the spring, I may have a, I probably, I haven't really booked it
• 8:11
  David: yet, but I've got a few slots open for permit fishing down at Copal Tree.
• 8:16
  Marvin: Yeah, and so they should just go to davidblinken.com and get all the info and
• 8:19
  Marvin: reach out that way, right?
• 8:21
  David: Yeah, they can just reach out directly to me from my website.
• 8:24
  David: And, you know, the info is not on my website. It's just something that they
• 8:30
  David: can call and find out what the schedule is, and I'll fill them in.
• 8:34
  Marvin: Well, there you go. Well, listen, folks, as I always say, you owe it to yourself
• 8:37
  Marvin: to get out there and catch a few. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, David.
• 8:41
  David: Tight lines.