Anchovies where they shouldn't be?

We did hit a few spots looking for a big fish bit on the big flies, but didn't even get a chase. There were guys in a nearby boat who got a couple of nice fish on big topwater lures. The conventional anglers always do better than us on the big stuff so that's not surprising, they can just cover more water, quicker and the lures make much more noise than we can with flies that are castable. There area a couple of guys using custom built 12-14 weights at his time of year, but I can't bring myself to use a 12 for these fish. I'll stick to the 10, it usually turns up something, just not this year so far. The weird warm weather may be playing a role in this because the big bait and the big bass didn't seem to be around until much later than usual, in fact they've only been around for a few weeks and it's nearly time for them to start heading off to spawn.

What we did find, eventually, were huge schools of anchovies which are also here at not quite the right time. We'd been trying various structure points and canalised areas inshore but results were slow, so headed to check the offshore platforms. There was quite a blow and swell going so it wasn't comfortable, but it was worth it. Hundreds of bass were herding anchovies around the platforms and we managed to fish on the lee side after struggling to get a few bass in the rougher water. Moving to the Lee side were still a bit uncomfortable, but were able to control the speed of the flies better, and conveniently there was a school of anchovies around 50m across with bass boiling in amongst them. fished a small rubber candy most of the time and although the fish were absolutely full, they were still willing to eat now and then. Because of the platform lights you can easily see what's going on, there were huge numbers of bass around and most casts were resulting in follows to the boat side without an eat, which is exciting. Very few of the followers did eat, and given how swollen and fat the fish we did catch were that's not surprising, but we were able to convert a few with the musky style figure 8 at the boat side, which is really cool. It felt a bit weird doing it with a 6 weight and a 2" fly, but it was working so you just keep doing it. I said to Dave one of those boat side eats is worth 20 normal eats, he agreed of course, because it's true. I also got a blackfin seabass, which is pretty unusual around here. They are more prolific in other parts of the country and get bigger than we see here. As pleased as I was with that, the figure 8 eats were still the high point of a night that started slow, but delivered in the end.