Presenting our new Northeast Collection.

(Below are some thoughts on Northeast fishing and flies. Click on photos for more about the flies.)

Rocks and surf, beaches at dawn, epic busted bait balls, clichés of the Northeast saltwater yes but clichés are rooted in reality. Saltwater fishing in the Northeast can be pretty rugged; anglers can get washed off of breakwaters, tides are big, waves can be intimidating and the water's cold, the flies are big. Of course, you can't talk about Northeast saltwater fishing without talking about stripers. These fish can be way up rivers with strong currents and big bait trapped in eddies or found cruising beaches feeding in the waves. Often anglers work a rocky shoreline pounding flies into ripe pockets hoping to bring out a nice bass. There are also captains like Eric Wallace and Bill Cox, who focus on the shallows, stalking stripers from a poling platform as if they were redfish. There are all kinds of ways to chase stripers, all of them fun.

Stripers aren't the only fish in the sea. Bluefish are voracious feeders often balling up bait and coloring the water with blood. When other fish have had the best of you a few blow-ups of bluefish can remind an angler that they actually can catch fish. That said, Capt. Scott Howard has found schools of bluefish a few miles off the Maine coast gently sipping the smallest bait in the surface, they are spooky and hard to catch.

Then there are the real beasts, blue fin tuna. These fish break rods, wear down the fittest anglers and often require good boat skills far from shore. Almost everyone we've talked to who chase blue fin are in love with the hunt. To someone unfamiliar with this pursuit it could seem like taking a long boat ride to nowhere, but successful anglers are looking for certain currents or deep water structure. You get in the area and start looking for gannets plunging, if everything works right bait arcs out of the water and tuna following by blowing holes in the surface.

Then of course there are the smaller tuna-like fish: false albacore and bonito. Fast, schooling feeders that require quick, sometimes long, shots and the right strip. Fast and fun albies are a little easier than bonito but both are a blast.

For all of this the angler needs a range of flies. Stripers are known for eating big bait, alewife, pollock and herring; so an angler needs big flies. There are also all kinds of smaller bait fish; juveniles dropping out of marshes or the anchovies and silversides that school up all over. The good news is that the other Northeast game species eat almost all the same bait. In the shallow water there are often crabs and shrimp available to stripers. The most successful anglers know what the fish are feeding on, and consider both size and color when selecting the effective flies. It can be a difficult task, but we've done some of the work for you.