Every year I block out a couple days for my family to go to Old Orchard beach and striper fishing with my good friend Mark Drummond or http://www.fishlikemad.com but with 2 inches of rain coming, we decided to cancel that trip but still hit Old Orchard Beach. As we were packing for the trip I remember my good friend James was in the process of getting his guided license to fish for stripers on foot, so I sent him a text seeing if he was available Friday night or Saturday. Saturday afternoon worked out better because when fishing stripers you need to fish the tides, so noon was our meet time.

We hit Old Orchard Beach Saturday morning for a few hours, fit in some ball tossing, swimming, arcade and lunch. We then headed south to fish with James. He also brought his girlfriend, Liz, along to fish with us. So the six of us went out in search of stripers. I only had two rods rigged for stripers, so lucky James had all the equipment and flies we needed, which made it a lot easier since all my stuff is set up for fresh water.

He had us walking the beaches and fishing among islands. He had several spots to take us. We did a lot of casting and I could tell James was a little nervous that we were not seeing any fish but we know that this is fishing and that these fish move around. But we had confidence in James and just kept at it. On one of my retrieves I was lifting my fly out of the water to cast, I had a grab at my feet but missed it, this gave up hope.

Liz and Jen headed back to the truck, but James wanted to hit one more spot before we did and it was a good call because we came up on feeding birds and busting fish. We had many fish on, but if you set like you are trout fishing, you will not hook these fish. Once we got rid of that habit we started landing fish. The final total was eight landed! A great day fishing for stripers.

I really think James will make a great guide. He was patient, knew his area, great with the boys, helped Jen with her cast, never gave up and was just a great all around guy. I think he will be a very busy guide, so if you’re looking for a great experience, call Eldredge Bros Fly Shop: 207:363:9269 and ask to fish with James.