Every year, I meet folks who decide to give surf fly fishing a try. Many make a couple of visits to the beach and then give up. The main reason for the high dropout rate seems to be the difficulty of finding and catching fish. Surf-zone fish aren’t particularly smart, and you don’t need to be an especially gifted angler to catch them. The difference between success and failure typically boils down to reading the water and, as with most fly fishing, luck. Here are some tips for making the transition from fresh to salt relatively painless.
DIY Learning
Loads of folks have taught themselves to fly fish the surf. It can take a few trips to get the kinks worked out, but for many, this do-it-yourself approach has a special appeal — it makes every triumph, big or small, so much sweeter. If you live reasonably close to the beach and have some work/life flexibility, this can be a particularly gratifying way to learn and ultimately to master the skills needed to catch fish with confidence. If you have fished the surf with bait or spinning gear, you probably already know enough to make the switch to flies. The internet has videos that can also be a great help.
You can often get help while on the water. Although there’s not a huge number of anglers who fly fish the surf, it’s not unusual to bump into one or two, especially on beaches located near urban areas. These folks are usually happy to help out if you are polite and ask a few quick questions before moving on.
Expert Help
If a DIY approach isn’t practical, or if you prefer to fast-track the learning process, you have a couple of choices. Perhaps the best way to go is by hiring a competent guide to show you the ropes. They’ll likely have the necessary gear and know which beaches are fishing well at any given time. A quick online search should help you figure out who is best placed to help you take your first few steps in the suds.
Another option is to join a club that holds surf fly-fishing fishouts or clinics. These are a great way to learn how to fish the surf and also to develop a network of contacts who can tip you off to any hot bites. You won’t get the kind of hands-on attention a guide can provide, but you’ll learn from folks who know what they’re doing.
Safety
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of actually finding and catching fish, we need to discuss safety. The very first item on your surf-fishing checklist should be some form of personal floatation device. It doesn’t matter if it is a simple vest or more sophisticated autoinflating suspenders. Just make sure you never step into the suds without one on. In all likelihood, it’ll be something you wear, but never need.
While you may feel comfortable wading up to your waist or chest in a river, this is a bad idea in the surf. Even the most boisterous river is no match for the hydraulic complexity and power of the surf. Swells, beach topography, and shifting sands will all conspire to knock you down and may even pull you out to sea. If you are just starting out, it’s best to fish from the very edge of the water, so only your boots get wet. Occasionally, a wave will push a bit farther up the beach, but you’ll be fine if the wet stuff stays below your knees. Highly experienced surf anglers may wade a bit deeper, but you’ll need many, many hours on the beach before you develop that kind of familiarity. Thankfully, the fish are usually pretty close to shore. A 50-foot cast from ankle-deep water should be enough to get your fly where it needs to be.
Gear
Some surf-zone experts will argue that you really need gear designed for saltwater fishing: powerful rods, heavy lines, and flies that match the surf-zone hatch. In some situations, this is true, but for folks who are just checking out the surf, I’d recommend using your freshwater gear. For surfperch, which are the most common surf-zone species, a 6-weight rod and a fast-sinking line are fine. Trout-weight double-handers work well, too. Just rinse everything well in fresh water when you’re done fishing. By all means, buy or tie some surf-zone flies if you like, but don’t worry if all you have is a handful of size 4 Woolly Buggers in red or white. Leaders should be no more than 3 feet of 10-pound or 15-pound-test mono. Think simple, and you’ll do just fine.
Stripping Baskets
While it is possible to fish the surf without one, a good stripping basket can make things a lot easier. There are plenty of commercial baskets that’ll do the job, but the best are made from rigid plastic or foam. Flexible-mesh versions are no match for the surf, and will droop and spill line at the most inconvenient times. If you are into DIY, there are loads of homemade options available online.
Whatever type you use, make sure the belt and/or basket can be quickly removed. If you do get into trouble, you’ll want to be able to shed the basket ASAP. The best setup I’ve found is a basket that attaches to the belt with Velcro. The Scientific Anglers ECOastal foam basket comes equipped this way. Another option is to buy a hard-plastic basket and replace the plastic clip belt with one made from
“One Wrap” double-sided Velcro, one or two inches wide. You can buy 45 feet of the stuff for under $20, and it is also great for securing rods and gear inside your vehicle.
Waders
Many anglers in Southern California are quite comfortable fishing the surf in shorts, especially during the summer. But a pair of breathable chest-high waders is going to make things a lot more comfortable when you step into the water north of Point Conception. Bootfoot and stockingfoot waders are both fine. You can use regular wading boots in the surf, though ones fitted with felt soles will make you feel like Herman Munster as you slog across the sand. Again, don’t worry about the salt destroying your gear. Just wash everything with fresh water and allow it to dry.
Structure
Like their freshwater brethren, surfzone fish tend to concentrate in areas that provide food and moving water. In the surf zone, such features are referred to as “structure.” Troughs and rips are two types of structure that consistently produce fish. These features are in a constant state of flux, especially in the winter and early spring. This can make learning to fish the surf from November to March more challenging. If you get the itch to fish the suds during these months, it probably makes the most sense to hire a guide or to join someone who already knows the ropes.
Structure becomes more stable in the late spring and early summer, when the beach isn’t being pounded by monster waves. This is also when larger surfperch move into the surf to feed on sandcrabs and give birth. (They’re viviparous.) If there is an ideal time to learn the surf, it’s probably from April through July.
By late July, the structure will have started to fill in with sand, reducing the strength and depth of food-bearing currents. As a result, the fish tend to spread out. When you do find structure, it’ll often be quite ephemeral, forming and disappearing within minutes. You will probably have to walk farther to find fish than you would earlier in the year. By late August, most of the structure has completely filled in, and the fish will be harder to find.
Fishing Troughs
Troughs are perhaps the simplest piece of fish-holding water to find and fish. Visually, a trough is an area of darker water located between the foamy water washing over an offshore bar and the foamy water sloshing around your feet. Water in a trough flows parallel to the beach, so if you see a dark strip of water flowing from right to left or vice versa, you’ve found a trough. A trough looks and behaves a lot like a river.
Depending on the time of year, troughs are typically 3 to 6 feet deep (at high tide), 20 to 40 feet wide, and cover 100 to 200 feet from their “headwaters” to where they dump into a rip. The fish will move throughout a trough, so make sure you cover all the water. A simple wet-fly swing is usually perfect. The best time to fish a trough is when a flooding tide pushes water onto the beach, covering areas that formerly were dry or too shallow for fish to access safely. This usually means you’ll want to be on the water two or three hours before a high tide.
Fishing Rips
Rips are formed at the downstream end of troughs, which feed water into them throughout the tide. They are often referred to as “holes,” because that’s how they look at low tide, when the adjacent trough is no longer flowing. Perhaps the easiest way to find a rip is to find bait fishers. You’ll usually find one or more of these folks soaking sandcrabs in the rip nearest to the beach entrance.
You’ll notice how the water in the adjacent trough turns through an angle and heads offshore, cutting through the waves like a dark tongue. That’s the rip. They are usually big and deep in the spring, so you may need to add weight to your leader or put on a leaded fly to stay close to the bottom. By early summer, things have usually mellowed out, and you can get away with unweighted flies.
Fishing a rip is pretty simple. Just pitch your fly into the rip and let the currents move it around as you retrieve it back to shore. The hot spot is usually located where the trough transitions into the rip. Surfperch are stronger than trout of equivalent size, and anything over two pounds will often take line off the reel. When they get to three pounds, you may even see your backing getting dragged through the tip top. Once you learn the basics, you can branch out to target other surf-zone species, such as corbinas, halibut, and stripers. Sight fishing for corbinas is every bit as challenging and exciting as bonefishing, and striped bass are basically high-speed thugs with fins. As for halibut, they fight hard, and few fish taste as good as fresh-from-the-surf flatties.
