The Chesapeake Bay fly fishing experience in Virginia has its own unique qualities.   The species, such as striped bass, redfish, and seatrout, all have had to adapt to the state of the fishery in Virginia, which has declined over the years.  However, the fishery still has some amazing numbers of fish, and the fishing can be superb for schoolie stripers, redfish, seatrout, flounder, and other species of fish.  Although this podcast is great for Chesapeake Bay, the techniques and general approach on this specific fishery are not only applicable to this particular water.  In fact, Capt. Chris Newsome discusses some really interesting rigs and fly patterns that can solve a lot of problems for warmwater and saltwater anglers.  Chris has been consistently successful in locating sometimes huge numbers of fish by focusing on the structure that the fish now have to use.  In other words, he’s successful because he has adapted his fishing approach to different fishing situations.  In this podcast, you’ll learn how to really find fish and be successful on Chesapeake Bay and even other Eastern striped bass fisheries, but you’ll also learn lots of techniques that you can apply to any water.  Here’s the podcast and some of the highlights.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: FLY FISHING FOR STRIPERS AND OTHER GAMEFISH IN CHESAPEAKE BAY

• Major species of Chesapeake Bay for the fly rod
• Breakdown of the seasons and best times to fish Chesapeake Bay
• Major locations of stripers and other fish in Chesapeake Bay
• State of striper fishing in Chesapeake Bay
• The most common prey items in Chesapeake Bay
• The approach he takes with fly selection and presentation
• Major classes of flies for active retrieving
• Variations in weighting setups for different actions (different actions depending on the placement)
• Weedless system with worm hooks and with tungsten beads
• Playing with fly design to get different actions

LINKS AND RESOURCES FOR FLY FISHING CHESAPEAKE BAY AND STRIPERS

Capt. Chris Newsome’s site

Some examples of Capt. Chris Newsome’s fly patterns

Understanding fly actions

Chris’ personal Facebook page

Bay Fly Fishing Facebook page

Sebile Stick Shad

VMC Worm Hooks (6319)

Decoy Worm Hooks (21 and 15)

Savage Gear weights

There is a ton of great information on fly fishing Chesapeake Bay in this podcast, but here are some more detailed notes from the podcast.

During the summer you see the majority of the variety of the species when fly fishing in Chesapeake Bay.  He sees, in varying numbers, stripers, redfish, speckled trout, bluefish, weakfish, flounder, and some cobia.

He points out that the fishery has taken a huge hit to its larger striper population on many fronts.  For this reason, he starts his season in June and goes until around November.  It’s a lesson on how easily we can destroy portions of fisheries.

Locating fish and, therefore, fly fishing success is based on knowing the structure.  This structure attracts both the prey species and striped bass, redfish, seatrout etc.  Being creative and finding this structure is critical to catching fish on Chesapeake Bay.

Chris brings up a very important point with fly selection and changing flies.  We need to really take into consideration all of the factors that are involved before we go and change our flies.  If you know fish aren’t there, then it may not be the fly at all.  Remember to keep all of the fishing conditions in mind when you start messing around with your fly selection.  This is a much more efficient way to choose your fly patterns.  Otherwise you start playing roulette with fly selection.

We can get different actions depending on the placement of the weight with our striped bass fly patterns, as well as any fly patterns in general.

Let us know if you have any questions or there was something from the podcast that you didn’t understand or can’t locate.  We’ll do our best to get you going in the right direction.