Fished the Thames river yesterday and there was a good amount of Striper Schoolie action. Mostly during the outgoing tide. Best action was from boats or kayaks. There were people fishing from the docks but they did not seem to catch much. Saw a seal there, and (s)he did well from what I could see.
Drift down from the Norwich ramp where the two rivers meet and troll through the seem. You could go for 3-400 yds then paddle/motor up to the start and repeat. Saw three fly fishermen and about 8 boats in total. All fish were in the 17-18" range. Does well to help with the shack nasties.
Best action was from about 15 - 25 feet down with a slow retrieve.
Did not ask others but I had success with Clousers, red/white and chartreuse/white. I think the issue was getting them down deep enough. I tried some others but had too much trouble getting them to go deep, in spite of the sink type III line. I could have waited longer and used something lighter but I don’t like to feel like my fly fishing is the same as drifting soft rubber which is what’s in vogue in the spin world these days. I wanted to be more active so the Clouser let me get down fast and my retrieve and provided the action.
The trick I think was more the depth and some action rather than a color of fly. Thats why the full sink line helped.
what I found interesting was looking at the bottom with a good depth finder. You could see the schools of fish all balled up. They were acting just like in the story books. Sitting just outside of the main flow, on the edge. The schools were 10 - 20 feet deep and maybe 20 yds long.
I imagine they were looking for the bait to flow by them and they’d slowly go into the current grab a bite and go back to the slack water. The other location was in the harbor which is basically a back eddy where I imagine some of the bait goes to avoid the force of the flow as well.