Saltwater Flyfishing

Soon after moving to California from Georgia I got a job at the Golden Valley Gun Club, working on the trap and skeet ranges. This gave me the money I needed to upgrade my tackle to saltwater class, a fly reel with 200 yds. of backing and a larger spinning reel that held 250 yds of 12# test.

Every chance I had I was at the Santa Monica Pier in a rented rowboat, learning about saltwater fly fishing. I soon learned bonita didn't care about color as they were color blind, they just wanted the fly to go fast. They were very easy to catch when they were up and feeding on baitballs, but finding a baitball within reach of my rowboat was pretty tough.

I saw lots of them offshore, but they only stayed up for 5 minutes at best and before I could even get close they were gone. I solved the problem somewhat by chunking up frozen anchovies ( anchovies broken up into inch long pieces, then throwing a chunk in the water about every 10 seconds ).

This made a trail of chunks clear to the bottom, and when a school swam by they would follow the chunks to the boat. When I saw them flash in the chunks I would throw a hand full out and they would go nuts on the chum, a fly cast in the chum and just allowed to sink slowly like the chunks would usually bring an instant hit. These inshore "bones" ( bonita ) were usually under three pounds, but if there was baitballs around some of the jumbos would show up.

And when one of them hit I knew I was in for an incredible fight. They could easily run 50 to 60 yds. of line off my fly reel and take 15 minutes to land. My fly fishing charters continue to be some of my most popular charters. I also learned to catch calico bass, sand bass, halibut, yellowtail and the occasional white sea bass on the fly. Tuna are color blind and they don't care about color, but the other fish can see colors and color in the patterns for them sometimes is very important.

Usually you can't go wrong with white streamers with a red patch at the throat, but I found when I rode on the party boats that herring and tomcod ( brown bait ) usually caught the larger fish. So I started tying larger patterns with brown in them and started catching much larger calicos and sand bass. ( big bait, big fish )