Transcript: On the Salt with GotOne
S5, Ep 141: On the Salt with GotOne
2023, Marvin S. Cash
The Articulate Fly
http://www.thearticulatefly.com
Transcript
Marvin:
[0:04] Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Flower, back with another On the Salt with Got One with Captain David Blinken.
David, how are you doing?
David:
[0:13] I'm doing great. How are you doing, Marvin?
Marvin:
[0:15] As always, just trying to stay out of trouble, and you're fresh back from a hosted trip to Mexico.
David:
[0:22] Yeah, we had a good time. We were there, we got lucky we were there during the new moon, and we had a lot of hungry fish.
Marvin:
[0:31] Got it. And so for us non-saltwater folks, what's the new moon have to do with their willingness to eat?
David:
[0:38] Well, I think the theory goes if there's a full moon, they're eating more at night.
In the new moon where it's darker, I think you get better chances.
Also, we had really good tides.
So we had higher low tides and higher high tides, which brought the fish really close to the mangroves and way up inside the mangroves, which made for a lot of fun.
Marvin:
[1:04] Yeah, it looked like you had some really nice baby tarpon and it looked like the lodge you were staying at was really fantastic.
David:
[1:11] Oh yeah, tarpon town's the best. And we stayed at their new lodge in the heart of Campeche and just had great old world charm and all the wonderful restaurants in town or just a short walk from the lodge. It was really great.
Marvin:
[1:29] Well, that's awesome. Well, I've got a question for you that we were talking about before we started recording, and you seemed to be pretty excited.
Brenner is a pretty regular question asker on the Articulate Fly, and he wanted to get your thoughts.
If you don't have electronics, what inshore features and structures hold fish?
David:
[1:48] Well, you know, that's such a great question, and there's two ways to approach the question.
Shorebound anglers actually understand that very well, and what they'll do, and this applies to boats as well, what they'll do is they'll fish all the different tide cycles and all the different moon cycles.
So, you know, you've got four different tides each month, and you've got two moon cycles.
And fishing at the bottom of a tide or low tide exposes a lot of structure, lets you see what the flow of water is like in and out of these estuaries or structures.
And fishing the top of the tide, kind of hides all that stuff and gives you an idea of current.
[2:37] I know that when I am fishing a spot for the first time on foot, But I like to go with dead low tide because when I am fishing as the water comes up or during a higher tide, I'll know where some of the dangerous areas are for wading, where I shouldn't be going so I don't fall in and get hurt or worse fill up my waders.
And similarly, when you're fishing from a boat, either striper fishing or albies or bluefish, fishing from a boat, maybe you're casting inshore, maybe you're casting around structure, you know, fishing these different tides and different moon cycles gives you an idea of the ebb and flow of the fish in a particular area.
You really need to get to know an area well in order to be able to fish it effectively.
And in looking at the tides and the moons and the wind and understanding the bottom structure from the point of view of low tide versus high tide is is invaluable.
Marvin:
[3:39] Yeah, and I would imagine once you find the structure in a certain sense, you know, the incoming and outcoming going tides, it's kind of like, you know, finding trout on structure, right?
David:
[3:50] It is. It is. And just like in a river where you have some sweepers where you might find a bunch of trout sipping dries behind a sweeper or behind a rock, similarly, rocky structure and points are super effective when fishing for saltwater quarry.
Even when I'm bone fishing, for example, and I'm wading a flat and the flat's no more than knee deep.
When I come to just slight bottom differences of maybe three or four inches that might create sort of an underwater point, those areas very often carry bonefish.
And similarly, when I'm fishing striped bass, either wade fishing or pulling my skiff, these little bits of structure that are there, even in the shallowest of water, will hold fish.
Marvin:
[4:44] Yeah, and I would imagine too you probably can find choke points so that either the fish are stacked up waiting for the tide to come in or they're trying to make sure they get out when the tide comes out.
Probably almost like fishing for steelhead, right?
David:
[4:57] Yeah, I would say inlets, the mounts of estuaries, jetties where, you know, goes in and out of a harbor.
All these choke points are really good or when water's flushing past a certain point.
Sometimes certain points are better on the incoming tide than the outgoing tide just because of the way the water hits it.
There's a couple of places I fish in Long Island where I get great water flow on the outgoing tide, but on the incoming, it's just kind of slowly coming in.
So I'll fish those areas more in the outgoing tide. And similarly, There are other places I fish where the incoming tide just fishes so much better in a specific place.
So being mobile is certainly helpful, and understanding the flow of water from place to place is really invaluable.
And that's why understanding all the different tides and moon phases and the high water marks and the well watermarks are so important.
Marvin:
[6:06] Yeah, that's really neat. And you know, folks, we love questions at the articulate fly. You can email them to me. You can DM me on social media.
We're trying to make David's life a little bit easier. So send me the questions and I'll manage that process. And if we use your questions, I will send you some articulate fly swag.
And remember that we've got two giveaways for this series of on the salt.
Uh, if you send in a question, you get it into a drawing for a hardy reel and a wolf line of your choice.
And then if we use your question on an episode, you're going to enter a drawing for a Norvice tying system, which is a great way to get your hands on a Norvice and give it a shot.
And we should give a shout out to our friends at Norvice as well for generously sponsoring uh this series, you know, Tim and the team at Norvice are great.
They just got back from the International Fly Tying Symposium in New Jersey last weekend. And if you go to www.nor-vice.com, you, can, start to get all kinds of great ideas for the holidays, for the fly tire in your life.
And I know that Tim's going to be putting up their show schedule here pretty soon, but I would expect them to see lots of places that you've seen them before.
And David, I know you mentioned before we started recording that you and LuYan are busy putting together the schedule for Masters on the Fly.
And I know that you're going to have an announcement for us next time, but when roughly do you folks can expect to see the series kick off this year?
David:
[7:22] I think we're gonna be kicking off sometime in mid-January and probably, I would imagine you know just before the the show in Edison which I think is the last weekend in January and you know hopefully but we'll have more to give you in a couple of weeks when we do the next show, but we have two or three things lined up right now, and we just want to fill out the rest of the schedule before we announce, and we're really excited.
Marvin:
[7:57] Yeah, absolutely, and I know since you're the favorite beta tester of Got1, any interesting bugs you've found that are getting ready to get fixed pretty soon?
David:
[8:05] They're working on one occasionally when I bring up the app, I can't see all my data, but that probably is just a sheer numbers thing, so I think they're working on that.
For some reason, it seems to only happen to me and one or two other people, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.
I'm nearing 600 logged fish and got one in the short time I've using it.
I tried to hit 600 this weekend, but it was just too rough for me to pick up a fly rod and go fish the ocean on Saturday and Sunday.
We had a big swell. It was a perfect wind. It was a northwest wind, but the swell was huge on the beach.
So I stayed in and did some work in the garden instead.
Marvin:
[8:53] Well, there you go. Definitely a power user problem. I know we're starting to get some weather and it's cooling off again on the East Coast.
Are you getting excited? Do you see snowflakes starting to show up in Pennsylvania?
David:
[9:05] Well, you know what? Outside where I live on Wednesday, in the Poconos and the Catskills and all the way up into the Green Mountains, they're looking at a potential for six to ten inches of snow depending on where you are.
So that's great. And, you know, there's about, I don't know, there's about five or six skieries that are open in the East Coast currently, and after Thanksgiving, there'll be a whole bunch more.
Marvin:
[9:31] Wow, that's pretty crazy. I know they've been getting a fair amount of snow out west.
And, you know, folks, I want to wish all of you a happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving, David.
David:
[9:41] Yeah, happy Thanksgiving, Morgan, and happy Thanksgiving to everybody else, too. Thanks so much.
Marvin:
[9:46] Tight lines, everybody.