By Captain Jason Moore

They slip in on the rising summer tide, largely unseen and certainly unheralded. But for a (very) few knowing fly anglers, cownose rays bring the heat.

It took a few seasons to crack the code on these rays. Summers along this stretch of coast can feel still and slow. Flounder settle near the cuts, and bluefish might light up the surface occasionally, but the fly game stays subtle most days. Then the rays showed up. Clean water sweeps over sandbars with the tide. Big fish move with intent and are more than willing to eat a fly if it moves just right. It felt more like the tropics than southern New Jersey.

It made sense to go looking.

Wild Bill stood on the bow of the panga, relaxed, rod tip low, line stripped out and at the ready. The tide flooded the flat, rolling up the edges and across the sandbars. Ripples were starting to show, carrying everything the rays came for—small fish, sand crabs, and anything else caught in the tumbling current, or that moved too slowly without burrowing into the sand. From up top, dark shapes slid in and out of the flow, wings just breaking the surface as they fed, pivoting and leaving clouds of fine sand in their wake.

Cownose rays (Rhinoptera bonasus) are a seasonal fixture here, showing up each summer as the water warms along the shallow inlets and bays of the Atlantic seaboard. Averaging 20 pounds and sometimes pushing twice that, they cruise the flats, bays, and beachfront troughs looking for small fish and crustaceans, turning over sand and leaving behind the plumes that give them away.

The skiff is panga-style with a mostly flat bottom, a poling platform, and an honest eight-inch draft. It’s built off the same commercial lines still used across Latin America—clean, simple, efficient. It tracks quietly, floats skinny, and gets into water most boats can’t.

At dead low, the flat is barren. Dull brown sand stretches wide under harsh light, soft underfoot, and still. But as the tide begins to push, the flat changes. Water creeps in. At first, it’s a slow fill through the deeper cuts, then it builds. Fish start moving. Crabs scramble. Everything that feeds, crawls, or drifts starts shifting. And right behind them, the rays.

They don’t show up early. They hold just off the edge where the current stacks, sliding in only when there’s enough depth and enough commotion. They appear just as it all comes together—slow-moving shadows drifting with purpose, wings tipping slightly with each adjustment. They come in low, sometimes so close you’re sure they’re stalking you.

This time of year, sand crabs and small fish are everywhere. Female crabs flash bright orange egg sacs beneath their bellies, and the rays don’t pass them up. They track low, lift slightly, then drop to pin their food. That’s why the take isn’t always seen—it’s felt. A hard pull, sudden and heavy, like someone trying to rip the rod from your hands.

When the tide tops out, the flat exhales. The fish don’t leave, but they vanish under depth and glare. The current spreads, and the surface goes glassy. Contrast disappears. That narrow window is all you get—just enough water to bring the flat to life, but not so much that it hides everything.

And that window doesn’t last long.

The Right Stuff

It’s timing. Knowing when to push and when to post up. When the rays decide to eat, they’re looking for a fly already trying to get away—tumbling in the current, bouncing off the bottom, fighting for the edge.

They aren’t easy. Like any good saltwater prize, cownose rays force decisions. They’ll make you question the cast, second-guess the strip, and lose the angle. Rush it and you’re late. Wait too long and she’s gone. Everything has to line up—the cast, the fly, the retrieve. Miss any one and you’re done.

The flies are simple. Sparse baitfish in light tones with a little flash, tied on stout 2/0 hooks. Sand flea profiles with a sash of orange or green Alphlexo crabs. But it’s not just the fly—it has to move like it’s trying to stay alive. Move like it’s getting thrown out of a bar, a bit frantic but still trying to stay in control.

A 10-weight is standard, paired with a good reel and at least 200 yards of 30-pound backing. Rays run wide, dig deep, and don’t quit just because you want to.

Leaders are basic. No taper unless you’re feeling fancy or are getting ready for a trip to the Yucatan. Twenty or even thirty-pound fluorocarbon stays connected without drawing attention. Go heavier and they’ll see it. Go lighter and you’ll regret it on the first run or when the line scrapes across their back.

Flat on Flat

Bill was ready. His flies were tied for this place and these fish—no bulk, glued wraps, weighted right. They dropped fast, didn’t tumble, and held bottom when needed. Flies that looked like they didn’t want to be seen.

The first school came through, rays packed close, almost touching. A push of shadows fanning across the flat. Bill dropped his cast just ahead of the lead ray. Let it sink—two slow strips. The fish flared, hovered. Then came the take, and the line went tight and the rod bent, and it was on.

The flat erupted. Wings slapped the surface, and the ray surged. Not quick like a bonefish, but deliberate, like she meant to drag us across the inlet. The rod bent deep. The reel screamed. I don’t remember the line going; it was just the backing melting away as she ran.

Rays don’t bolt. They tear into long, heavy runs with wide arcs and no give. It’s like pulling burlap through current—nothing flashy, just constant resistance. The first run was long. The second longer. When it slowed, it didn’t get easier. Rays settle and pull harder, fanning their wings into the pressure like it’s personal.

You need to feel this in your legs. The rod stays low. Steady pressure.

Bill worked the fish slowly. I turned the skiff to hold the angle. The ray surfaced—still heavy, almost calm. We brought her close, popped the hook, and watched her slip back into the current. One last pulse of sand, and she was gone.

Line was stripped out again. Another fly tied on. Another school already sliding in. Same angle, same game.

Catching rays isn’t about numbers. It’s about reading the push. It’s about one fish at a time and, if everything lines up, then another.

Barracuda Breakdown by Chico Fernandez

Fly Fishing the Surf with Bob Popovics

Bison Of The Flats: The Bumphead Parrotfish

The post For a (very) few knowing fly anglers, cownose rays bring the heat. first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post For a (very) few knowing fly anglers, cownose rays bring the heat. appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

Many coastal fly anglers consider surf fishing to be the ultimate challenge. Fortunately, most of us live within a coffee-mug drive from some of the best surf fly fishing opportunities in the world. Down South, the snook is king, while Up North the striped bass wears the crown. There’s a supporting cast of bluefish, mackerel, trout, and jacks.

Bob Popovics is one of the best at the game of surf fly fishing. He’s been at it for more than 50 years and lives only minutes from New Jersey’s Island Beach State Park, a favorite for striped bass hunters. His surf experience also includes time at surf fly fishing haunts like Martha’s Vineyard, Montauk, and the Outer Banks.

Just back from Vietnam in 1970, the young Marine was eager to get on with his life and get back to fishing with his dad and working at his family’s Shady Rest restaurant in Bayville, New Jersey.  A lunch get-together with high school buddies Jimmy Magee and Butch Colvin (whose dad owned the iconic Cap Colvin’s Tackle in Seaside Park), was the first step in a lifelong fly fishing journey that has made Bob one of the most influential fly tiers of the second generation of saltwater fly fishing pioneers.

The three buddies arranged a trip off Harvey Cedars to jig weakfish, but when bluefish crashed the party, Butch grabbed a fly rod and began casting. “I thought that was pretty cool, and wanted to learn more about fly fishing, so the next day Butch took me to Cap Colvin’s to buy my first fly rod, reel and line,” Popovics says. “I was hooked. It was like therapy, and the process of learning to cast and catch fish was soothing, and great fun. I fished with the fly rod as often as I could.”

Later that winter, Butch gave Bob a cardboard beer flat filled with a fly tying vise, bobbin, thread, and some feathers and bucktail, and said, “You’re going to learn how to tie flies.” Back then, there wasn’t much information about saltwater fly tying, but like the promise of a full moon at high tide, a new organization called the Salt Water Fly Rodders of America (SWFROA) brought a fresh level of excitement to coastal fly fishers with an exchange of information, techniques, tackle, and fly tying. Bob was an eager student.

Annual get-togethers were sponsored by SWFROA and its chapters at places like Tilghman Island, Maryland; Key West, Florida; Newport, Rhode Island; and Sag Harbor, New York. Bob attended one on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where he met Lefty Kreh, who became a good friend and mentor. SWFROA had many well known fly anglers on its board of directors, but Fred Schrier of Toms River, New Jersey, was the dynamo, “the juice,” that drove the new organization.

“I owe a lot to Fred,” Popovic says, “because he was a great motivator, always encouraging me to try new things, and he helped introduce me to so many people like Mark Sosin, Poul Jorgensen, Bub Church, and many others who generously gave me advice and support. Fred’s really the guy who gave me the biggest boost.”

“Surf fly fishing is a very visual experience, and to be good at it you have to be an observer, be aware of your surroundings, the type of beach, the breeze, the currents, and beach structure. Watch everything that happens all around you. Before you make the first cast, walk up to the beach, wait a few moments and observe. Watch the wave sets, get the feel of the rhythm of things before you start fishing. Before I make the first cast I check out the water for signs of bait, cloudy and clear water edges, the formation of bars and points, the location of white water and calm water, and the types of birds in the area. You need patience to be an observer, but it makes you a better fly fisherman.”

Bob likes to keep things simple. He may have plenty of fly gear and equipment in his beach buggy, but keeps only the bare essentials in a shirt or jacket pocket when he’s standing at the water’s edge fishing. “I always have my stripping basket, and like to use a Velcro belt, which is so much easier to get on and off than a buckle-type belt. My pliers are on my wading belt. I pare down what I need to just a few flies and essentials. Instead of taking 20 of each type of pattern, such as crab flies, or bucktail Deceivers, or Jiggies, I take maybe three of each so I have enough on hand to replace a broken-off or fish-chewed fly. I like soft fleece wallets that fit into my shirt pockets to keep a supply of favorite flies close at hand.”

He also keeps a spool of 16-pound tippet handy, and another of 12-pound for very clear water. He usually doesn’t use a heavy mono bite tippet. If blues show up, he has a screw-top tube container in his pocket (like the kind that hold cigars), with 8-inch wire leaders tied with a haywire loop at one end to attach to the tippet. The open end is then haywired to the fly.

“Most of the time I know what to expect when I hit the beach, so if the mullet are running, I take mullet patterns and don’t bother loading myself down with a bunch of flies that probably are not appropriate,” Popovics says. “I do like to have a color selection on hand in case I need to change from a bright fly to dark one, and same goes for short and long patterns.”

Bob favors a 9- or 10-foot, single-hand rod, and says, “Although I’ve tried, I haven’t gotten into the two-hand casting style, and prefer to use single-hand rods most of the time. I like a rod that is not an ultra-fast design. In my consulting work with fly rod manufacturers and in teaching fly casting, I’ve come to like fly rods that have a tad more bend in the butt section as compared to stiff, ultra-fast taper fly rods. Some of my favorites include designs by St. Croix that give the surf fly caster better control of the fly presentation when mending the line or when lifting the line to make a quick cast to reposition the fly. This is an essential feature for any good surf fly rod.”

“When fly fishing the surf, it’s common to retrieve the fly all the way to the rod tip. To quickly and efficiently make the next cast, I like a short, blunt-head line that will load the rod with less line outside the tip. You’re looking to make as few false casts as possible, so a short compact head will load the rod quicker and more efficiently. Use the resistance of the water to help load the rod as you lift to make the backcast, shoot some line on the backcast, then shoot the works on the forward cast. Depending on wind you may need another false cast to reach out to the fish, but always strive for the fewest number of false casts. The goal is to lift for the backcast, shoot, and shoot again on the forward cast.”

“A floating line is my first choice when selecting a fly line. Most fly anglers can dependably cast 50 to 70 feet, and at that distance most beaches will be about 5 to 7 feet deep. A striped bass can easily see the fly at that depth and if you need to go deeper, a weighted fly like a Jiggy or a Clouser Minnow will get deep enough,” Popovics says.

A floater with a short intermediate head is his second choice. “You want to be able to pick up line and recast if necessary, and this is still possible with an intermediate sink tip fly line. You need to do this if the fish moves away from you after you’ve made a cast, or if the fish veers off at an angle from its original swimming direction.”

“A floating line only behaves badly and makes a poor presentation in the surf when you allow the line to be carried away by a breaking wave. You can overcome this by working the line in between the waves, letting it ride and fall with the waves as they roll to the beach. Watch the sets. After six or seven waves, there’s usually a calm area before the next set starts and you can make a nice presentation into this calm water.”

Bob recommends that every surf fly angler learn the skill of mending line. This quick, circular flip motion of the rod tip adjusts the line’s position in a current or wave to keep the fly tracking nicely. If the wave action makes it impossible to control the fly, he uses a roll cast, then lifts for a backcast, and shoots a forward cast to reposition the fly in calm water. “Rod handling becomes second nature, and after awhile you don’t even think about it. The line mending and lifting just become automatic responses to the motions and actions of the waves.”

We all dream of catching a fish so big we won’t have to fib about it, but typical surf-caught striped bass run from schoolies to teen-size and maybe into the 20-pound range. A 30-pounder is an astonishing catch. Even the biggest striped bass will not take too much line, so Bob prefers lightweight large-arbor reels that can hold about 150 yards of backing. “You don’t need a huge reel. The weight of a big reel gets tiring and feels like you have an anchor under the rod. More important is a large spool diameter that retrieves line quickly. Keep in mind that most fish I can play by simply bringing the line in by hand and dropping it into the stripping basket.

“Most reels today are saltwater worthy,” he says, “and it’s probably more important to consider which hand you use to crank the line in. Right or left, the dominant hand is your best choice. A right hander will reel faster, longer, and more smoothly with the right hand; the opposite is true for a southpaw.”

It’s natural to want to walk into the surf up to your knees, but Popovics prefers being higher on the sand because many times the bass will be right in the wash. When fly fishing a beach, the currents and structure are important. The basic current is from the incoming and receding waves, but there are also beach currents generated by wind that often run along the beach. These areas can be worked by letting the fly swing in the current, mending the line as needed to keep in touch with the fly and not let the waves pull line and cause an erratic retrieve and slack.

Bob suggests surgically casting along the beach structure just like a trout fishermen in a small stream. The bass aren’t everywhere; they hold and travel along definite structure such as a slough between the beach and a sand bar, a cut in a sand bar, a point of the beach with white water along its sides, the edges of clear and cloudy water, and also the calm water. “Work all of it,” he says. “Use wind and currents to your advantage when walking the beach. Keep the wind off your non-casting side when possible, or walk with the current a few steps in between casts.”

Bob’s good friend Lou Tabory told him, “There’s no substitute for time on the water,” and Bob echoes that with more good advice, “Even a fishless morning can still be a great day because of the experience earned and knowledge gained. Count the hours, not the fish. Be an observer, look for things, think about what’s going on around you, work the structure, and remember that time on the water builds casting and fishing skills.”

As the premier fall surf fly fishing builds, Bob uses specific fly patterns based on what bait is prevalent as the season matures from September through November. For the early fall, he’s usually throwing Siliclones and Bob’s Bangers to imitate mullet, and Jiggies and Surf Candies to imitate rain fish. When bigger baits are in the surf, his go-to patterns include bucktail Deceivers, The Beast, and Spread Fleyes. Later in the fall, when the sand eel invasion has hordes of the slender baits invading the beach, he’ll switch to longer but skinny Jiggy Fleyes.

One last tip, one of Bob’s favorite fall times to fly fish is the start of a fresh northeaster before the water gets all roiled up and murky, when it’s still clear. “The bass go on binge feed,” he says, “and if the water is real rough, I’ll use a 300 to 400-grain sink tip line to cut through the turbulence.”

Surf fly fishing is popular for many reasons, including its simplicity and nearness to home—and equipment doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. It’s exhilarating when a full-blown bluefish blitz erupts, yet serene and calm as the sun ignites the dawn and striped bass begin to swirl at bait in the trough. Fly fishing the surf is a lifelong adventure that has captured fly fishing pioneers dating back to Rhode Island’s Harold Gibbs, New Jersey’s Cap Colvin, and Maryland’s Lefty Kreh—and it now inspires today’s new generation of fly fishers.

Read more great articles like this one and get expert tips from the legends of saltwater fly fishing in the pages of Tail Fly Fishing Magazine. If you love saltwater fly fishing and wish to improve your game, support conservation causes and become part of a small but incredible community, then subscribe to Tail Fly Fishing Magazine today.

You might also like:

Stripers in the Suds – John G. Sherman

Striper Redux – Jack Gagnon

Worm Hatch – Northeast – Striped Bass

California Corbina: Sight Fishing the Surf

More Articles by Pete Barrett:

Fiberglass Rods for Saltwater Fly Fishing

Who Caught the First Bonefish on a Fly?

Amazing Autumn Fly Fishing

The post Fly Fishing the Surf with Bob Popovics first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Fly Fishing the Surf with Bob Popovics appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

Your guide is encouraging, “Come on. You’ve got this. Pull harder now.”

No, you don’t have “this.” Your mental composure was gone 45 minutes ago. In reality, you never really grasped the fact that this fish has been a survivor for 100 million years, it’s a 140-pound tarpon, close to 60 years old, and it thinks it’s going to die.

As neophytes, we have to understand a couple of things about how to successfully subdue huge fish. First, when we finally get the fish of our dreams on and we don’t want to lose it, we’ll never really fight it with all we’ve got. There’s no way we’re going to pull hard enough to take the chance of breaking it off. Second, we really have no idea how to pull hard or even what the limit is. When your guide says “pull harder,” most anglers probably just lean back and put a bigger bend in the rod. Wrong.

The key to catching big fish with excessive power is understanding not only how hard you can pull on that fish with the class tippet you’re using, but also understanding the anatomical ability of your fly rod as well as your body.

The tip of a fly rod is used for short casts, the middle is for medium to longer casts, and the butt is used for fighting fish. Your body is similar to the rod, with some parts capable of extreme power and other parts more suitable for feel and lighter resistance. If you misuse the rod or your body—and usually it’s both at the same time—the catch you’re hoping for is highly unattainable.

Here’s an example: Leaning back with a high, big bend in your rod while trying to subdue a big fish does nothing more than bend the tip, which has zero resistance. It looks good to those who know nothing about the subject. But trust me—it’s useless. That’s why anglers end up fighting fish for an hour and sometimes much longer. That can also kill a fish because of the high levels of lactic acid that build up during long battles.

There is a place for fighting fish with a high, bent rod tip. When trout fishing with light 7x and 8x tippets, or saltwater fishing with 2-, 4-, and 6-pound-test tippets, the sensitive tip will help absorb the energetic thrashing of a fish. But that’s not our scenario here.

It’s also impossible to put a big bend in the upper part of the rod without using your biceps. That single biceps muscle holding and lifting the rod will grow fatigued in no time if you’re trying to apply 12 pounds of pressure or more. If you reach up with the other hand to the mid-section of the rod to help, you’ll change the fulcrum and break the rod.

You must learn to use the butt of the rod and lift with your legs, shoulders, and back. If you lift the rod higher than 45 degrees from the water level, your biceps comes into play. To bend the rod, you have to bend the elbow.

Most of the class tippets I’ve used for the last 35-plus years catching tarpon have been 16-pound Mason. I used 16 because the biggest tournament in the world required anglers to use it, and I wanted to keep my feel for that class of line.

International Game Fish Association (IGFA) fly fishing rules require anglers to use 20-pound test or lighter; even offshore marlin anglers are confined to this guideline. Tom Evans caught his 273-pound blue marlin on 16-pound test—one of the greatest fly records of all time.

For all those guides and anglers who use 30- and 40-pound test, I challenge you to the blindfold test. Take four rods with 20-, 30-, 40-, and 60-pound-test tippets and connect them to a scale. Stand back and pull with a fish-fighting rod position—not a straight rod—for 15 minutes, and see what the scale reads. I suspect none of the rods will pull more than 12 to 18 pounds.

You may escape a bad mistake fishing with 40-pound class, but you’ll never pull harder than what I just mentioned, and over time it will prevent you from becoming a better angler.

I wrote about understanding reel drag and marking your reel with Sharpies or paint in our last issue. But there’s even more to consider. When you measure drag resistance with your line coming straight off the reel, you get a clean number before you start to bend the rod as if fighting a fish. If you measure how much friction and resistance your guides create with a well-bent rod, it’s about 20 percent more than with a straight rod. So if your drag is set at 10 pounds, it’ll now take 12 pounds to pull line off the reel.

It’s important to understand that your drag setting doesn’t accurately represent what you think it does when you compare the preset value to a fish-fighting scenario. A fairly straight rod angle to the fish will be pretty close to your drag setting.

If you want to take the guesswork out of it, you can also set your drag with your rod bent in a fish-fighting angle. You don’t want to set your drag too close to the breaking strength of your tippet. You need to have a little room for error and the fish’s first run.

If you have a tight drag and you have to clear 30 feet of fly line before you get the fish on the reel, there’s a good chance he’ll break when that slack is gone and it hits a tight drag. And if the drag is set too close to the breaking point and a 100-pound fish falls on your leader, it’s over.

The fly rod and your body need to work together, so I want to tell you about the greatest fish-fighting tip I know. This drill matches up your weak and strong body parts, as well as those of the rod. It’s a revelation that will make you a better angler.

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TFFM Consulting Editor, Andy Mill, is one of fly fishing’s leading authorities. He has won more invitational tarpon tournaments than any other angler, including five Gold Cups. Andy is the author of A Passion for Tarpon (Wild River Press). You can listen to the fly fishing podcasts produced by him and his son Nicky at millhousepodcast.com.

The post How to Catch Big Fish by Andy Mill first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post How to Catch Big Fish by Andy Mill appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

Great Point lighthouse is a popular tourist attraction on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts.

Running out of the inlet, he said, “I feel good about where I am, Dad. I feel good about what I’m about to do.” We were headed towards Cape Lookout and I knew he was talking about fishing and I know he was talking about things other than fishing, and he worked the boat through the rough water where the outgoing tide was piling up in tall rollers and calm water lay ahead.

That albacore season with Jack, everything seemed to be on hold, and teetering, and it was a long Indian summer of warm days and he was out of school during the pandemic, starting his senior college year with online classes, and finally had time for something he’d never had time for before: Getting serious about saltwater fish on the fly.

For three years he’d guided for trout in Montana during the summers, rolling back east barely in time for the first day of classes. But that summer was different, in every imaginable sense, for everyone and certainly for a rising college senior. And one of the silver linings was this: He’d spent the summer on our boat, and on his friends’ boats, chasing Spanish mackerel and bluefish and redfish, live-baiting for kings, practice-casting on the beach, and tying flies.

We’d been hard after the false albacore for two weeks, with intermittent success. During our best chance we’d each landed a fish from a popcorn-blitzing school and he was fighting his second, and in a moment of selfish disregard I cast from the console and sent a lead-wrapped size 2 heavy-gauge hook through one side of his ear cartilage and out the other. I cut the line and he landed his fish with the heavy fly flapping against his ear lobe, and then we motored away from the other anglers so I could work the fly out as he fought nausea and fainting. I was a little on edge, waiting for him to blow up—I would have, and who wouldn’t?—but he was perfectly calm. “This is fishing, Dad,” he said. “This stuff happens. Give me a minute, okay? Let me catch my breath and see if I can stand up and we’ll get back after them.”

Then, clearing the inlet, we raced towards the Hook, set on beating the other boats to the fish, the rising sun a golden scimitar on the horizon. It was three days before Halloween and he was unshaven and grizzled, with Chaco tan lines striping the tops of his feet. He even smelled like an angler, shorts and shirt slimed with fish scales and blood and sweat, and why wear a clean set when more of the same is coming?

I’m a brooder with a slight tendency to pout when I don’t like the way the stars line up, and I’d found more reasons than I should to lament certain moments of the last few months. Jack’s last year in college. His last autumn close to home. Most likely our last chance at false albacore in what could be a longer stretch than I wanted to contemplate. I’d started to count the grains of sand slipping through the glass, and hoard each one as if it was the best there would ever be. It was an unhealthy approach, for both my head and my marriage, but running out of the inlet with Jack I suddenly realized just how different my headspace was than my son’s.

In the inlet, I sensed constriction and constraint and the turbulent waters of the far-off shoals. But for Jack, the future was as boundless as the great curve of blue that heralded the ocean ahead, as full of possibility as every new day on the water.

And just then I remembered a moment from the day before. I’d arrived in the late afternoon, and Jack had the fire crackling in the fire pit, and an extra Manhattan waiting on the picnic table beside the fly rods, and he grinned as I walked through the gate. He handed me the drink as I sat by the fire and his girlfriend smiled. “You know Jack,” she said. “He wanted everything perfect for you.” It was one of those times that under different circumstances might not have snagged in my heart. Just a chummy gesture among pals. Instead, it will go down as one of my most favorite fishing memories, although there was no fishing in it, no zinging lines or thighs pressed against the gunwale, only my son who’d gone to the trouble of carefully placing each element of that backyard tableau together to let me know: So glad you’re here, Dad. So glad we can fish together.

With the inlet behind and the smoky scrim of Cape Lookout seven miles distant, Jack bore down on the throttle, oblivious to my agitated state of mind. And that’s when I realized that I needed to recalibrate my own perspectives on the days and years ahead. Open water lay before us both. We each were on a course towards horizons unseen. I’ve chased the new and the unknown all my life, and all my life those pursuits have been a source of vigor and elation. That could only change if I let it.

The bow settled and I felt the bezel turning on my own inner compass. Running towards the cape, I scanned the water for diving birds and breaking schools. We had a full day of fishing ahead, my son and I, and neither of us would rather be anywhere else in the world. Whatever grain of sand was to follow was less consequential than the moment at hand.

…In our last issue of 2021, you’ll find themes consistent with this message of looking optimistically toward the future while respectfully recognizing the past. We welcome the venerable writer T. Edward Nickens as a new contributor. His thoughtful piece in The Undertow explores his own epiphany about hopeful perspectives on unknown horizons. Meanwhile, we also look back with respect on those who’ve preceded us; James Spica guides us, fly rod in hand, along the literary footsteps of popular New England writers, and we pay homage to SoCal fly fishing pioneer Sam Nix. Chico Fernandez provides a treatise on fly casting, Carlos Cortez schools us on not being mind-tricked by permit, and Michael Smith, another new contributor, reminds us to make time to fish.

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More about Saltwater fly fishing in Cape Cod…

George V. Roberts – Plymouth, Massachusetts

September – George V. Roberts Jr

Mark White – Atlantic Striped Bass – A Species in Peril

Atlantic Striped Bass: Pisces in Peril | Mark White

The post That Albacore Season – T. Edward Nickens first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post That Albacore Season – T. Edward Nickens appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Stripers in the Suds – John G. Sherman first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Stripers in the Suds – John G. Sherman appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

Inshore Surf Sight Fishing for Corbina

I’m wandering the beaches again on an early April morning, looking for California corbina. I walk three beaches for about  7 miles, looking at structure and looking for fish. The third beach doesn’t show much promise until I’m about to leave. I look down and see two corbina sitting right at my feet like a pair of silver ghosts. They immediately blow up and run for deeper water. 

Okay. We have some fish here, and it’s the early season. Soon I see a pair of fish, then a triple, and finally a pair in the distance. I line up a cast at an angle and slightly past them. I’m fishing a fly I developed for sight fishing, a bright pink Surfin’ Merkin. I can see the bug in front of the fish. A couple of quick strips puts the fly right in the distant pair’s path, and I let it sit. My type-6 line is on the bottom, the bug is anchored, and I have a good position. 

As soon as the fish near the fly I start bumping it to look like a burrowing sand crab, which causes the fly to kick out puffs of sand, its legs simulating the paddle legs on the real thing. Both fish begin to follow the bouncing fly, and eventually one lunges ahead of the other to eat. I watch both fish and fly to judge when to set the hook. As soon as I see the fish lunge and arch its back and the pink fly disappear, I know it’s on. 

Immediately both fish blow up and flee to deeper water. The head of the hooked fish is shaking all the way into the backing. Montana-based Sweetgrass Rods designed this bamboo rod for me, specifically for this fish—and it’s a great stick. The click-and-pawl reel is screaming now, and the bamboo is bouncing with each shake of the fish’s head as I clear the backing. Eventually I surf the corbina in on the waves and slide it onto the wet sand for release. The overhead light brightens the purple iridescence of its back and the chrome sides. The bright pink fly looks like a wad of bubble gum stuck to the fish’s lip.

This is the season’s first fair-hooked, sight-caught corbina—a fish to which I’ve been addicted for a very long time. 

Corbina, which run from California’s Point Conception down through the west coast of Mexico, tend to show up with the mole crab beds in the spring as the sand pushes into the beaches. Although the season generally runs from April to August, the unique and challenging corbina are really only available for surf sight casting in the summer. You can fish for corbina blind. You can also cast to suspicious swirls or short sightings—what we call vicinity casting. But the real deal is sight casting and actually watching corbina eat your bug. Corbina are easy to snag, so most of us only count fish hooked in the lip.

A lot of factors need to line up for a good shot at sight fishing: good sun overhead, no fog, good structure, low wind, and solid sand crab beds to hold the fish for a while. But great conditions aren’t guaranteed, so you have to work with what you have; when the stars do align, however, sight fishing for corbina can be awesome.

I’m always scouting locations, looking for beaches that are cut up with structure like buckets or troughs, which will fill up at different tidal cycles. As corbina push in looking for a meal, they’ll pile up in some of this structure, which gives the angler a better opportunity to present a fly. Scouting multiple beaches at low tide can pay off when I find one that is set up better than others. 

Troughs will have lateral current, and corbina typically feed into it. Anglers can follow a fish and get multiple presentations. My favorite is a trough that dumps into a bucket and turns 90 degrees out to the ocean with a flat right next to it. The fish will pile up at that corner and hop onto the flat to feed before rolling back to the deeper corner water.

Some sections of beach will be structured more like a flat, and water will push in a sort of sheet. In this situation, fish will sometimes ride that water in with their backs up out of the water, feed, and then leave with the tidal recess. Swirls, backs, and wagging tails clue anglers to the presence of fish. Without structure like buckets and troughs, you may have a short window to present before the fish has fed and left. 

Most of us sight fishing for corbina use rods from 4-weight to a 7-weight with a variety of lines: 30-foot sinking head integrated lines for most situations, intermediate heads for calm days, and in rare instances floating lines.

The fish will swim right over the sunken head. You can use a larger-test leader and pull on the fish harder to get them in quick. If you are fishing a sinking line, give it a test cast and see how much the line swings in the current before anchoring in the sand. This will give you a rough idea of how much to lead the fish to avoid presenting the fly on top of them or behind them. 

My go-to sight-casting fly is a pink Surfin’ Merkin, which is based on the Merkin permit fly. The Surfin’ Merkin has been tweaked to make the fly look and act more like a burrowing sand crab. It is also pink (rather than Merkin gray) for improved angler visibility, which doesn’t seem to bother the fish. You’ll see that bright salmon pink at a distance and at some depth in structure. Being able to see the fly and the fish greatly improves your odds of getting a grab and setting the hook.

I mentioned a bamboo rod earlier; over the years I’ve migrated to slower rods because most of this game is in close—as in 5-to-30-feet close. No kidding. A corbina will sometimes follow my fly until its head is out of the water at the sand’s edge before eating. So I often have to cast with part of the fly line’s head still inside the rod. I’m not casting to the fences here, so a slower, more accurate rod works better for the close game.

Sight fishing for corbina in the California surf is by nature a tricky and local endeavor—and for these reasons a like-minded community has developed around this fishery over the years. Initially there were just a few of us nuts out there; now there are more. Those interested in giving corbina a try might enjoy my friend Al Quattrocchi’s book The Corbina Diaries, which covers the history and techniques of this game. 

For many years we used to fish a spot we shared with an older spin fisherman named Matt. Initially he was a bit grumpy when we took to fly fishing in his area of operation. He fished live sand crabs and wore a hat right out of the Crocodile Dundee movies, so we nicknamed him “Corbina Dundee.” One day I was sight fishing a single fish that was ping-ponging between a group of swimmers on its right and left. Matt, who had finished fishing, was busy watching. I couldn’t get a good presentation. My only option was to lob out a cast perpendicular to the fish’s travel—and sure enough, the fish turned 90 degrees and followed the fly. I kept slowly bumping it all the way to the edge of the waterline, and my fish ate the fly with part of its head out of the water before screaming off to the deep. Laughing, I looked to Matt, who had observed the entire incredible show. 

Sight fishing corbina in the surf isn’t easy, but the cool people and the crazy fish keep me coming back. And even if you strike out, you get a nice walk on the beach out of the deal.

Bio: Paul Cronin has been fishing local California beaches for 20 years. When he isn’t fishing, he designs and builds robots in his workshop.

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Los Cabos – Saltwater Fly Fishing

Saltwater Fly Tying – The Salty Stripper

Fiberglass Rods for Saltwater Fly Fishing

Lessons Learned Inshore Surf Fly Fishing

Within Tail Fly Fishing.com are several great articles on inshore surf fishing for several species of saltwater fish.  Stripers in the Suds is another great article to learn more about the sport of inshore surf fly fishing.

The post California Corbina: Sight Fishing the Surf first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post California Corbina: Sight Fishing the Surf appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

Captain Earl Waters stripped off 60 feet of line from the reel and handed me the thick, one-piece composite rod. “Here,” he said curtly. “Cast.”

I unfurled the length of the line after a couple of back casts, shooting the fly straight to nowhere in particular.

“Hand the rod to your buddy,” he said, directing Charlie Madden to do the same drill.

Waters had stopped his pristine, teal-green Silver King skiff, with a coral-colored cap, about a half-mile out in the Gulf, just outside of the Homosassa River channel. We were apparently being interviewed realtime for a skills check. 

Madden made his cast. Seemingly satisfied with the results, Waters fired up the outboard and zoomed south toward the flotilla of boats spread across the expanse of shallows outside of Chassahowitzka Channel.

It was May 15, 1993. Madden and I were, at last, tarpon fishing the equivalent of golf’s Augusta National. We were rubes, with about a year of saltwater fly fishing under our belts, and had thin wallets with just enough credit between us to split two guided days at Homosassa and two nights at the storied Riverside Inn.

Booking it had not been easy; we couldn’t find a guide who’d take us. Without a history and a bankroll to fund at least a week or more on the water, Homosassa guides were not particularly interested in taking on new clients, especially neophytes. 

We reached out to David Olsen, former manager of the now-defunct Fly Fisherman in Orlando, Florida, for help. A few days later, Olsen called back: “If you guys can fish May 15 and 16, I have a guide who’ll take you. Name’s Earl Waters. I vouched for you guys—told Earl you could cast and see fish.”   

Thus, the on-the-water interview, which had really begun at the Homosassa launch ramp.

Our initial introduction at the ramp wasn’t much more than a head nod of acknowledgement that we were Waters’ clients. After readying his skiff, he examined the four-piece graphite rod and Islander reel that Madden and I planned to share. 

“You can put that rod back in your car,” Waters directed. 

Reading the perplexed look on my face, he answered my unspoken question. 

“That rod is too small for these fish.”

I was bummed. The four-piece, 12-weight Loomis IMX, stamped “DEMO” just above the single cork handle, was my prized tarpon possession. I’d found it in a bin marked “half-price” in a sporting goods store in Denver on a recent business trip. That it was now being relegated to the hotel room, along with the dozen IGFA-leadered flies, neatly fixed in a new leader stretcher rigged specifically for this trip, was painful.

In retrospect, I fully appreciate the atmosphere of that morning. Waters expected much, considering his clients and friends included the likes of Al Pflueger and John Emory. Indeed, in Monte Burke’s Lords of the Fly (an extraordinary, must-read compendium on the 50-year history of fly fishing for tarpon—specifically for record fish at Homosassa), the arcing intersection of legendary guides and anglers, chasing tarpon for the better part of half a century, explains it all. 

Over our two days, Waters became genuinely sociable, and generous with information on all manner of tarpon fishing, even though finding the tarpon proved elusive. Shots were few and far between, but Madden did manage one bite and landed a classically average Homosassa tarpon.

Despite the slow action, Homosassa was mesmerizing. It possessed a magnetic draw for Madden and me that could not—and would not—be ignored.

In the Beginning

Homosassa, situated on Florida’s Gulf Coast about 70 miles north of Tampa, is legendary. Its legacy of tarpon fishing began about 1970. 

“When Lefty Kreh wrote about a trip he’d made to Homosassa in The Tampa Tribune, fishing with ‘the MirrOlure guys,’ Harold LaMaster and Kirk Smith, the word got out,” Captain Dan Malzone said in a recent interview. “LaMaster and Smith invited Kreh to fish with them as they chunked lures into the hole around Black Rock, which was stacked thick with big tarpon. I owned three sporting good stores at the time, so naturally, I’d heard about it.

“In 1972, Keys anglers Normand Duncan and Gary Marconi caught wind of Homosassa’s giant tarpon that nobody fished and started fly fishing there. They invited me to fish with them in 1974.  In the mid 70s, we were the only guys on the water.”

Subsequently, Malzone would fish Homosassa three days each week, Friday through Sunday, the only days his businesses would allow him, for the next several years.

In 1976, Florida Keys guide Steve Huff and angler Tom Evans, who would book Huff for 45 straight days, had had a rough spring, nasty weather keeping them dockside more often than not. One windy morning, with a low-pressure system settling on the Keys, they had breakfast with Duncan at a local diner. He suggested they drive up and fish Homosassa, where the weather might be better. “Where the hell is that?” asked Evans.

“We drove up to Homosassa,” Huff said in a recent interview, “launched the skiff … and never saw a fish all that first day. So the next day we hired a plane from a local airport to fly over the area to look for fish. And we found them … tarpon were everywhere.” 

Huff and Evans hit the water soon after they landed. “Tom hooked up on a big fish,” Huff recalled.  “He immediately became smitten with the big fish at Homosassa and wanted to come back.”

The following year, Huff and Evans spent three consecutive weeks fishing Homosassa. The flats were still mostly absent other anglers and skiffs, but record chaser Billy Pate had gotten word of Homosassa’s giant tarpon. Like Evans, Pate had the financial wherewithal to pursue big fish for weeks at a time, and he spent the entire tarpon season chasing records at Homosassa.

“On Memorial Day 1977, Pate and his guide (Hal Chittum) were the only ones on the water besides Tom and me,” Huff said. “About three in the afternoon, fish began pouring in from the west by the thousands. Tom caught seven tarpon that afternoon, all over 150 pounds. His seventh fish was 177 pounds.”

Continue reading this and the hundreds of other impeccable features in the pages of Tail Fly Fishing Magazine, the only magazine dedicated to fly fishing in saltwater.

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Alive & Well in the Florida Keys

A Fish My Age – Henry Hughes

Worm Swarming—At Long Last

The post Homosassa:  A Reminiscence of The Greatest Tarpon Fishery first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Homosassa:  A Reminiscence of The Greatest Tarpon Fishery appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

Part of Gartside’s genius was developing deadly yet easy-to-tie flies. His Gurgler and Slider topwater patterns became saltwater standards. Jack’s book Striper Strategies was described by reviewer Steve Raymond as “one of the most remarkable striper-fishing manuals to see the light of day.”

Gartside, who died in 2009, was one of a kind. He appeared on the cover of Fly Fishing in Salt Waters, making a cast while riding his large inflatable giraffe “Gerald.” When Lefty Kreh was asked his opinion of Gartside, he said, “His paint don’t dry.”

I met Gartside while helping at Robinson’s booth at a fly fishing trade show in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Robinson’s friend Dale Linder was also attending the show. Gartside was holding court, joking and tying flies at a nearby table. He invited the three of us to try fly fishing for striped bass when the weather warmed up.

On a bright June afternoon, we waded onto a Newburyport striper flat. Gartside caught one small schoolie after another while the rest of us got skunked. Not one to mince words, Gartside told me my retrieve resembled a motion he associated with self-gratification.

I was more concerned with the waves filling my boots. When I realized I couldn’t walk, I yelled for help.

“Don’t worry!” Gartside replied. “When your waders are full, you’ll reach neutral buoyancy.”

Linder had more humanitarian instincts. Luckily, he was also strong. He waded over and hoisted me up. I leaned forward and dumped out the water. I headed to shore on wobbly legs, telling myself, I don’t belong here. But we weren’t done. Gartside had another spot for night fishing.

The evening sun was slipping from from view as the tide came in. We stumbled through the grassy hummocks and sucking muck of a tidal flat and arrived at a point. Gartside walked out onto a rock jetty and started casting. Robinson, Linder, and I spread out along the shore.

I was using a borrowed 8-weight outfit heavier than anything I’d ever used. The sink tip and bulky streamer added another degree of difficulty, and I was hesitant to wade out very far in the dark, unknown waters.

I’d make woefully short casts, sit down on the sand for a while, get up, and do it again. I sweated, cursed, and caught nothing. Around 1 a.m., the agreed time to depart, I heard Robinson and Linder talking as they walked back up the beach. Then I heard a splash.

There was enough moonlight to see surface swirls of what I suspected were feeding fish. I slapped out another cast, stripped twice, and got a jolting strike. Slack flew up through the guides, but before I got the fish on the reel, a loop of line was yanked tight around my right index finger.

The rod was straight out now. So was my finger. Unaware of my predicament, Robinson started yelling, “Let the fish run, Jack! Let him run!”

I grabbed the line below the first guide, pulled, and got enough slack to free my trapped digit. There was a momentary tug of war, then the hook pulled out, and the line went limp. Robinson and Linder made a few casts, but the fish had departed to deeper water. As we reeled up to leave, Robinson said, “Well, at least you had one on.” It wasn’t much consolation.

We found Gartside standing where we’d left him. He had a fish taking drag, but it turned out to be an unremarkable striper, foul hooked in the tail. The walk back to the car held another surprise.

Gartside inflated a small rubber raft. I was puzzled. It looked like a child’s pool toy. But it became apparent that we’d need the damn thing to get back to terra firma. A wide ditch that was ankle deep on the way in was now a flowing canal. Gartside assembled a plastic paddle, handed it to me, and said, “We’ll go one at a time.” A length of thin rope was attached to the raft for retrieval.

Some experiences enlighten us. Others just remind us of the fragility of our existence. I paddled anxiously across the outgoing current as Gartside yelled, “Row a little faster, Jack, unless you want to go out to Plum Island!”

Here We Go Again

Fast forward to 2017. I’ve lived in Lakeville, Maine for 18 years. Ed Roberts, who I frequently fish with, lives half the year near Grand Lake Stream, a premier landlocked salmon fishery, and half the year in Florida. Both of us have more than 60 years in the rear view mirror, and like me, Roberts is originally from Connecticut. He’s a stalwart friend with a good sense of humor.

Among other things, Roberts time-shared a Battenkill River fishing camp with Joan and Lee Wulff. He made his living as a mechanical engineer, and he’s also an expert rod builder who works with bamboo as well as graphite. It’s not a cliché to describe him as young for his age. Forget white hair as a marker of senescence. For arm exercise, he does hammer curls with dumbbells I strain to lift.

When he captained an offshore sport boat on the Connecticut coast, Roberts and his clients fished for everything from sharks to yellowfin tuna. Now he fishes the flats when he winters in Vero Beach, Florida. He also spends a week in Rhode Island every summer, fly fishing for striped bass at night. He invited me to try it.

Wading the ocean after sundown? Fishing a channel coming out of a tidal marsh? I had my doubts. Roberts described a spot where he rarely encounters other fishermen. To get down to the water, he hangs onto a rope tied to the base of a tree. He says it’s easier than it sounds.

I was still hesitant, so he had me try the fly rod he uses; the action fit me to a T. He offered to build me an identical 9-weight. Okay, Ed, I’m in.

Into the Night

It’s June 2019—my third trip now. The long day’s drive from Maine includes the usual stop in New Hampshire for tax-free liquor. We arrive in Rhode Island late in the afternoon.

The house we rent, like our arrival routine, has become pleasantly familiar. Boxes and coolers are emptied into cabinets, drawers, refrigerator. The portable grill goes on the table out back. Tackle goes in the front room.

We sit at a small table on the front porch overlooking Narragansett Bay, decompressing from eight hours on the road. Roberts lights a cigar while I poke through fly boxes. We decide when to eat. After supper, we assemble rods, check tippets. Tackle goes back into Roberts’ SUV.

Fishing at night, we don’t attract unwanted attention to where we fish. It’s silly to think of other fishermen as interlopers, but our sense of ownership is reinforced by the solitude we have come to expect once the sun goes down. Half an hour before dark, we turn onto the familiar grass-crowned two-track. No one else is parked at the sandy dead end.

We suit up and walk in. Crossing the elevated field, we can see the incoming tide filling the back reaches of the marsh. Two herons stand motionless on a distant mud flat. The air still has the low-tide tang of salt and clean decay.

The coiled rope is where we left it hidden last year, tied to the base of a small cedar. The slope I once imagined as daunting is neither long nor steep. The rope is a convenience, not a necessity. Roberts gives it a test yank before we go down….

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Jack Gagnon was a monthly contributor and part-time editor for the Northwoods Sporting Journal (sportingjournal.com) in West Enfield, Maine for 15 years. His work has appeared in Trout, Fly Fisherman, Virginia Sportsman, Gray’s Sporting Journal, The Upland Almanac, and Sporting Classics.

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More great saltwater fly fishing content…

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The post Striper Redux – Jack Gagnon first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Striper Redux – Jack Gagnon appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The best time to experience a bait ball and frenzied billfish on the fly is late October though late November, as long as favorable conditions prevail and the sardines do not move out too quickly.

The speed of a striped marlin is often exaggerated, with reports exceeding 50 miles per hour. While marlin are capable of impressive bursts of speed, they top out at around 25 miles per hour. A typical striped marlin is between 150 and 250 pounds, but a 12- to 15-year-old fish can approach 450 pounds.

The sardine schools have only their great numbers as defense. To confuse predators, they form tight balls, relying on the probability that some will fall but enough will survive. Not only do the sardines have to endure assault from below, but they are also attacked by frigates from above.

Marlin are pack hunters; they systematically take turns charging the bait, bills slashing, in an attempt to disorient, injure, and isolate individual fish from the school. Isolated prey last no more than a few seconds outside of the protective cloud of the ball.

The most common marlin flies are white topped with green or blue; they can be tied as straight baitfish patterns or a popper head can be added to create surface disturbance. You simply toss them into the boil and strip them to suggest wounded or isolated prey. During times of high activity, a few strips are all that is necessary.

The frenzy can last for minutes or hours, but it typically stops as quickly as it starts.

Even if it lasts only minutes, it’s truly a sight to see.

A Photo Essay by Andrea Izzotti
Words by Joseph Ballarini

Bio: Andrea Izzotti is an award-winning wildlife photographer based in Genova, Italy. He is the author of Tales from Blue and Other Colors (2020) and Travelers in the Blue (2020). His work has appeared in National Geographic Italy, National Geographic Viajes, National Geographic Kids, Focus, Focus Wild, as well as other books and magazines. You can visit his website at andreaizzotti.it.

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Journey to Xcalak | Saltwater Fly Fishing | Trey Reid

Fly Fishing Film Tour 2021 – Dropped in the Pacific

Bison Of The Flats: The Bumphead Parrotfish

The post Los Cabos – Saltwater Fly Fishing first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Los Cabos – Saltwater Fly Fishing appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

I work in a fly shop. I hear and see every opinionated cliché that our beloved little niche sport conjures up. Often it comes from my customers, sometimes from my peers. 

“Always fish IGFA tippet.” 

“That fly with a spinner blade is so dirty!”

“Euro-nymphing is just Chuck and Duck Lite.”

“Bluefish are trash fish, a striper is a real gamefish.”

For the love of God, just go fishing. 

It would be compounded if I were friends with my customers and local guides on Facebook (as many of my coworkers are), but that’s one vitriolic cesspool too many for me. A peer will frequently inquire, “Did you see the rant about [insert technique] that [insert local guide] did on Facebook?” And while I’ve blessedly ensured my answer is always “Nope,” I’m never surprised when my peer relates the gist of the outburst. 

We’ve already willingly handicapped ourselves: We’ve taken the proverbial plunge into choosing to throw small, non-bait, handmade bits of feather and fur and tinsel. We’ve already decided that we have to get within 50 feet of our quarry if we’re going to present to them. We’ve already decided that our rods will be lighter-duty, more flexible, less wieldy despite putting ourselves at the mercy of offshore winds. We’ve decided that we’re going to comb the world in search of particularly difficult or hard-to-find fish—eaten by flies, ducking under mangrove arbors, being smacked in the face by tag alders along the way—just to make a cast that requires more room despite a particularly confined space. We’ve done all of this to ourselves; so this oasis of stupid doesn’t need to become a virtual battleground about the best, most traditional, or “highest” methods.

Ethics are a bit different. In my mind, there’s a fairly significant difference between whether or not scenting your fly is actually fly fishing and whether or not a certain fishing practice is better or worse for the resource. When it comes to protecting everything we hold dear and preserving it for future generations, any amount of discussion is good. It keeps the ethics of fishing at the forefront and keeps conservation in our brains. If talking about whether a technique is really fishing at all, or whether it’s snagging—that’s an ethics debate. If you’re talking about whether a particular kind of hook or presentation more frequently results in a deep-hooked or foul-hooked fish, then let’s get into it. I’d love it if everyone spent the time they take arguing about how to fish to talk instead about why to fish, or about how to be a better conservationist, or how to introduce someone to the sport. 

I meet many customers who are sheepish about mentioning methods outside of fly fishing. They’ll talk about a great day of fishing and then get a haunted look on their face as they intimate that some of the fish were caught on spin tackle. I can see the inner conflict, the uncertainty or guilt at mentioning conventional gear to a fly-gear guy. I’ll save you the trouble: You caught fish, good for you! And I say that with no sarcasm. You went out and fished, and that’s better than the person sitting in traffic next to you who may spend their weekend getting trashed at a club, searching for something that they’ll never find in the maw of a city. So you kept a couple fish for dinner? Sure is better than the person at the grocery store who doesn’t know or care where their food comes from. That old chestnut about stepping back and seeing the forest from the trees, about looking at the big picture, is appropriate here. 

In recent years, the sport of fly fishing has done its level best to escape the shackles of elitism. More young people, more women, more minorities are taking up the sport. The final mantle we need to shed is petty purism, which plagues every niche sport in some way (traditional archery over a compound bow comes to mind). If you’ve handicapped yourself by taking up this silly sport (yes, it is very silly), you’ve done well, my fellow idiot. Don’t argue with your peers about who’s the bigger idiot—we have enough ways to use the internet to demonstrate our idiocy without turning new anglers away with our bickering. Just go fly fishing.

By James P. Spica (Editor-at-large)

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Lefty Kreh – Well Done

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Fly Fishing Film Tour 2021 – Dropped in the Pacific

The post Fly Fishing: Handicapping Ourselves first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Fly Fishing: Handicapping Ourselves appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.