A fish I am very looking forward to hooking on the fly are staging chum. I know one estuary where I can get out and find them at low tide but it is very well known and I anticipate crowding issues. I've done some research on the fishery and learned that it is best approached at low tide, as fish tend to push into the creeks at high tide, between the last week of October until the first big rains of November. Small sparse patterns in green, chartreuse and purple. I've seen conflicting information as whether to attack the fishery with sink tip/sinking polyleader lines, or intermediates. Most importantly, I am told to never cast into the schools, and always around them.
The two things I am struggling with are run timing and choosing good estuaries to fish. Just like we pick coho beaches by looking for beaches in migration paths, beaches with cobblestone, and points that jut out into the sound, what features do we look for in picking chum beaches? There have been far too many times I have been out to an estuary, and either found spawned out chum corpses littering the streambanks, or no fish to speak of at all
The two things I am struggling with are run timing and choosing good estuaries to fish. Just like we pick coho beaches by looking for beaches in migration paths, beaches with cobblestone, and points that jut out into the sound, what features do we look for in picking chum beaches? There have been far too many times I have been out to an estuary, and either found spawned out chum corpses littering the streambanks, or no fish to speak of at all