Speckled Trout & Red  Drum

Al recommends using floating or intermediate (slow sinking) fly line when fishing for trout and red drum.  Sinking line will get down on the bottom and be damaged by the oyster rocks and other debris on the floor.  When using intermediate line, one should start the retrieve soon after the cast to avoid letting it sink too deep and get torn up.

Clouser and deceiver patterns are very good.  Red drum in particular like patterns with a lot of copper in them.

Poppers are good for both fish, but usually only late in the day.  Al ties a hot lips pattern popper that throws a lot of water.  Pencil poppers are good, too.  There is a Florida popper that is very popular in Florida for redfish but it is a bit too subtle for our waters.  It doesn’t make as much noise as NC reds seem to need.

Shrimp patterns are another favorite.  He usually adds a glass rattle to provide some noise when he ties his shrimp.

If he is fishing in water 10’ or deeper, he will use a bottom dredge – a heavy fly that will get down quickly.  If drifting, you usually just let it drag across the bottom with just a little up-and-down movement.

During the winter, most people fish for red drum at low tide.  The rest of the time, Al likes a 2/3 tide the best.  He also likes points.  A point does not have to be where a creek enters but can be any indentation in the marsh.  He has lots of success catching fish on points.

He also likes sod banks – the steep-sided very dark banks with marsh on top and deep water close to the bank.  Fiddler crabs often live in those sod banks and drum love fiddler crabs.  Other baits move along the sod banks, attracting trout and other large predators.  Also, sod banks tend to heat up quicker in the winter because of their black color.

Al tends to wait until the water is up over the sod banks to start fishing them.  Once the water gets about half-way up the grass, he starts working points.

Sod banks tend to hold fish within 2-5 feet.  Thus he tries to cast at a 45º angle to keep the lure in the strike zone as long as possible.  One of his tricks is to get a small, brightly colored corks (perch corks), cut them in half and attach them several feet above a clouser.  They will drift with the current and keep the bait in the strike zone within a few feet of the bank.  The trick is to avoid “fishing” the cork (making it splash, etc.) as you would if you were fishing a popping cork or a popper.  You are fishing the clouser underneath and you do want it to have the movement of an injured baitfish.

Al does not always use red thread for tying his clousers but he likes to have a red collar behind the barbell eyes at the very least.

He uses a lot of  2, 1, and 1/0 circle hooks- going up to a 2/0 now and then.  He favors Owner thin wire circle hooks- and he fishes them barbless.  His has had great success with green/white/chartreuse clousers, again with the red collar.  He incorporates sparkle into the pattern as well.

Stripers

For stripers, Al uses nothing but sinking line.  Orvis Depth Charge is a very good sinking line.  He uses 500 grain on 9-wt. rods and 350-400 grain on 8-wt. rods.  Instead of buying line, often he makes his own sinking line by buying tungsten trolling cord at Great Outdoor Provision Company for about $1 per foot.  He will take about 30’ of the tungsten, use a “Chinese handcuff” connector to some old fly line with the weighted section cut off (meaning he uses the running part of the fly line) along with his backing.  He often uses a 4’ section of 16 lb. test mono as his leader/tippet.  He will try casting the sinking line with the rod he will use with it and keep cutting off 1’ sections of the tungsten until it feels right and casts well.  Usually he winds up with 23-25’ of the tungsten.

Lead core line can be used in place of the tungsten and it does sink faster.  But the coating on it tends to wear off quickly and the tungsten he uses has a flyline coating.  But if you fish very swift water and want the fly to descend quickly, lead core will fit the bill.

Again, he uses Owner thin wire circle hooks in the 1/0-3/0 size.  He fishes them barbless.  After May 1, all live bait fishermen on the Roanoke River are required to use barbless hooks so Al uses them all the time and has seen no reduction in catch ratios.

Casting sinking line is a trick.  You want all of the sinking section beyond the rod tip when you cast so the “Chinese handcuff” is not put under undo pressure.  False casting with sinking line is nigh impossible so here’s how Al casts.

First, he does not cast straight upstream or downstream while drifting.   Casting straight upstream while drifting would tend to keep the line from going to the bottom from the speed of the drift and a cast downstream while drifting gives you little time before the boat catches up to the line.  So he casts across current.  After counting down to give the line time to sink, he sticks the rod into the water as far as possible and strips the line.  Knowing he has 23-25’ of sinking line and a 9’ rod after he has retrieved more than half the sinking line he knows that if he lifts his rod there is very little sinking line left in the water.  He can now execute a roll cast to get that remaining line and the fly out of the water.  On the roll cast he shoots all of the sinking line out past the rod tip.  Before the fly and line has a chance to sink, he executes a cast and can hit 40-50’ (he was being modest – I’ve seen him hit 60-70’ routinely).  Never use an overhead cast with weighted line because it will hit you (and hook you) in your back sometime.

Al and Capt. Lee Parsons have fished stripers for many years on the Roanoke River.  They have determined that you can use any color fly as long as it is lemon/lime.  It worked incredibly well in 2011 and has for several years.  But you never know what color they like until you try catching fish.  If lemon/lime is slow, try something else. 

Summary

The best way to find out how Al Noble fishes is to go fishing with him.  He works so fishes weekends and late afternoons.  But he goes fishing and catches fish.  In addition, he has been a certified Orvis flyfishing instructor so he is a good teacher to help you work out the kinks in your casting, too.