Fly casting for saltwater fish is not like casting for trout or even salmon. The tackle and casting techniques are broadly the same, but the type of fly or lure used is very different. Most trout flies, for instance, are tied to `match the hatch’, in other words the fly tier has gone to a great deal of trouble to produce a pattern to imitate the actual insect life of the water to be fished.
By comparison with this selective approach, saltwater fly fishing is a rough and ready style of angling. Saltwater fish are opportunists, and their food comes in many forms and many shapes and sizes. The angler’s problem is not in finding a fly that exactly reproduces a real shrimp or sand eel, but in finding one that will trigger an aggressive feeding response in whatever species of fish is sought.
Many species of fish can be induced to strike at a fly, up to and including large game fish such as sailfish. Mostly, though, it’s the smaller inshore species that respond to fly-style lures. Bass, bluefish, bonefish, mackerel, pollack, permit, tarpon and a host of other species fall readily to fly gear, the trick to saltwater casting being to fully understand your tackle and the movement and preferred habitat of the fish you’re after.
Choice of tackle is of vital importance when you learn fly fishing on saltwater. Most experienced saltwater fly fishermen prefer long rods, the ideal weapon being a 91/2 to 10 foot, two piece boron or graphite rod capable of throwing weight forward lines in the 9 to 10 class rating. The reel should he a specially constructed, fully anodized saltwater fly reel. Failing this, you can use a good-sized salmon fly reel, but whichever reel you use it must be capable of taking a minimum of 200 yards of 20 pound hacking line as well as the bulky fly line.
Tapered leaders of type tied and used for trout fishing have little practical advantage kw saltwater use. Sunken rocks, coral beds or sharp-edged shellfish have little respect for a fly leader. The trick is to cut costs by purchasing individual spools of nylon monofilament of various breaking strains, and cutting off a 9 or 10 foot length whenever you need a new leader.
By cutting costs in this way, you might even catch more fish. If a leader costs very little, you don’t have to worry about losing it and you can happily fish amongst the really rough stuff where most fish are found. Fear of losing costly tackle cuts many anglers’ success rates to a dismal minimum.
If you can use a fly rod well enough to cast 60 feet or more in an accurate line, the only difficulty you’re likely to encounter lies in the choice of fly and the way you work it through the water. For shallow water or surface feeding fish you should use a floating fly line, but for depths of over 6 feet a high density fast sinking line is preferable.
Flies (except surface hugs) remain the same irrespective. of the type of fly line you use, but the choice of fly depends a great deal on the species of fish, the time of day and the water conditions.
Take evening fishing for Pollack, for example. During most of the daylight hours pollack live and feed close to the bottom. Then, as the light intensity begins to fade, they come up to feed close to the surface. Under these circumstances, any fly working through the surface layers is seen by the fish as a dark, moving silhouette. For this reason, black/ brown or dark colored flies seem most effective.
For people who want to learn fly fishing, the movement of the fly is often as critical as its color. With flies working on or just under the surface the trick is to create the illusion of a terrified and totally isolated bait fish. A natural fish finding itself in such a vulnerable situation panics and heads at speed Ibr the nearest cover.
If you want to learn fly fishing on saltwater, you must imitate the movement of a bait fish in which you can retrieve the fly in two ways. A long pull of line at medium speed will make the fly shoot forwards at an even speed. To a hunting predator this will look like a natural fish heading for safety. Effective though this style of retrieve is, an even better technique is to retrieve line with a very fast, very short chopping stroke of the hand, each pull taking in no more than six inches of line. This odd but high speed retrieve will give the fly a sort of panicked motion that few predatory species can resist.
For bottom fish such as bonefish or permit, both shallow water feeders, use a very slow style of retrieve. Both these species are browsers, living on shrimp and crab which they pick up directly from the sea bed. Most of their food is located by the little cloud of sand or mud which is stirred up as the shrimp or crab crawls over the bottom.
A fly tied over a lightly weighted body can be inched back over the bottom to simulate this movement. The weighted body of’ the fly helps it to dig into and stir up the sand or silt. and is essential to this type of fishing.
For large fish like tarpon or sail-fish, the fly should be tied in streamer fashion to imitate a reasonable-sized bait fish. Fly tied from line hair material give a bulky appearance without being too heavy to cast. This sort of fly should be worked at speed through the surface layers, and most big game fly casters wait until a fish has been sighted before attempting a cast