The Chesapeake Bay offers an astounding variety of fish to chase throughout the year. My favorite part of the calendar has to be fall, which brings some incredible shallow water fishing to Virginia. Summer can feel like the movie Groundhog Day; the same heat and humidity drag on with little change. By contrast, fall moves rapidly, offering a fleeting chance at some of the year’s best fly fishing opportunities. I feel that the season shows us three distinct faces as it whisks us from summer into winter. Each face is a season-within-a-season, offering its own unique brand of fishing opportunities and environmental conditions. The color of the marsh grass, the leaves on the trees, and the birds hovering around are good indicators for what bounty swirls beneath the surface.
Humans are want to put things into neat categories and set rigid dates on seasons. I’ll try to be more flexible and claim that it’s driven by observation of changing environmental conditions. Fall can be early or late, it can last four months or two months, and any of the three faces can dominate the pattern. The astrological September 21 through December 21 is not useful; nor is it the cultural Labor Day through Thanksgiving. I have a duck hunting friend who claims that August 1st is the first day of fall. This claim is not made without merit, but is based on the fact that teal, shovelers and pintails will often ride through the area on the first low pressure system in August.
Enough of the theorizing; let’s get on to the fishing. Three separate trips I made to a favorite spot of mine this fall can showcase what the shallows have to offer as the days get shorter. This will be done in a series, beginning here with early fall.
As I just mentioned, the first low pressure system in August kicks off the first face of fall. It will bring a brief period of reduced temperatures, northeast winds, and a break in the humidity. The hot weather may return, but the change seems to signal certain fish to begin to school up, presenting an easier target for anglers. The same nearshore fish of summer are still in play – cobia, bull drum, and Spanish mackerel. August has produced some of the best sight fishing for cobia and Spanish mackerel as the fish begin to concentrate before their migration out the bay. But fall is really about the shallow water trio of puppy drum, speckled trout, and striped bass. After the summer doldrums, theses fisheries begin to come to life in early fall. One particular day in August, my dad and I hammered the speckled trout over a 6’ deep grass bed under hot sunny skies. The next day featured a 20 degree temperature drop, high winds, and rain. Coincidence? I think not.
Early fall is a more pleasurable extension of summer. The water feels great and you can wet wade comfortably. The spartina grass is still green, but the verdant brilliance of May is replaced by a worn crocodile, reminding us of the fading summer splendor. Peanut bunker begin to venture out of protected creeks into larger tidal rivers. Ospreys are still around and make easy meals of the bunker, who betray their presence with a telltale blob of nervous ripples on the surface. Resident geese have raised their hatchlings all summer and now taking to the air again. A few early migrating ducks, particularly green-winged and blue-winged teal, may pass through the salt marsh on their way south. It’s as if Nature saved the best part of summer for last.
My favorite spot is unique on the Chesapeake Bay in that you can reach it without a boat. Beach geodynamics have created a sandy spit that has severely constricted the mouth of a large tidal bay. The land is publicly owned, so anyone can park a car, grab an eight-weight, and hoof it down the strand for some epic wade fishing as the tide whisks out this narrow inlet. I try to time my visit so that high tide falls about two hours before sunrise. This combination ensures that the current is ripping as the sun crests the horizon, and the fish are stacked up to ambush helpless bait swept along by the tide. I have taken a great variety of species here; my recent mid-September visit yielded speckled trout and a surprise flounder. I love it when a flounder leaves his camouflaged lair to grab a fly. The broad body and powerful tail make the fly rod tip go berserk in an unmistakable way. Juggling a fly rod, a phone, and a flopping flatfish while standing in thigh deep water isn’t easy, so you’ll have to imagine what his splotchy skin looked like.
In two of the past three years, we’ve had an invasion of shrimp into our lower Chesapeake waters during this early fall period. Not small grass shrimp, but true Atlantic white shrimp pushing five inches. While they’re plentiful in the waters of our southern neighbor, North Carolina, I don’t recall seeing them around before. (It could be that this is back-to-school time, and for most of my youth I was unhappily plucked from the saltwater and returned to schoolrooms and unable to see the arrival of the shrimp.) I suspect that a plume of warm water makes its way from Cape Hatteras to Cape Henry, bringing the shrimp. If this is a result of climate change, it’s one symptom about which I won’t complain. They flourish throughout fall in our shallow waters, providing an easy target for anyone halfway decent with a cast net. They also provide additional forage for trout, puppy drum, and rockfish, which is a welcome menu addition due to the cyclical nature of other forage such as crabs and menhaden. During this period, along with throwing the typical peanut bunker flies, I’m also reaching into my bonefish tray for larger shrimp patterns.
All good things must pass, and just as a summer low pressure system kicked off this face of fall, another coastal low will pass through and fall will show us a different face. If the weather forecasters are on top of their game and can predict its arrival by several days, stop what you’re doing and get down to the Bay. The fish can sense it too, and chances are they’ll be snapping before the blow.