Hi Honey, I'm home...An introduction to the casual vacation shore fly fisher.

Its cliche, so what? Fuck off.

Well, the yearly family vacation to the great wilds of South New Jersey has come and gone, again. Its a nice time, every year we rent some dude's house in Ocean City and relax for a week. The kids have grown up with it, and enjoy it, and I've begun to make an attempt to fish it every year.

Not very successfully, mind you, but whatever. Its the thought that counts or some sort of bullshit, right?

A few years back, right when I started to fly fish, I was sitting on the beach thinking about how fucking boring it is to sit on a beach and looking at the crashing surf. I decided next year, I'd buy one of those massive spinning rods and fish the family vacation away. It was mildly successful, if you're into little fish. I was awash in croaker like you couldn't believe and all I could think of was, "man, I bet these'd be a blast on a fly rod."

And that was the start of my surf fly fishing adventure.

Far more efficent than a fly
rod on the beach.

I think about a half hour of flailing a fly rod in the crush of breakers and in the face of a stout sea breeze fucking gale-force wind, and I gave up that thought once and for all.

Well, mostly. There's a place for everything, and for the casual, one-week-a-year-give-or-take-ocean-bound fly fisher. The beach front isn't really it. Certainly not with bathers on it, but even after they leave, its just hard. Too much for me.

I soak bait in the surf during the day. Its easier, far more effective, and you can effectively do it when there's people on the beach so long as you're aware that breaking off a 6oz sinker creates a lethal missile that'll easily fly 150+ yards into a random direction.

I'm not going to even pretend to tell you how to bait fish, because frankly, I don't know. You've really got to hold the stupid thing to detect strikes though, although I suppose a fish finder rig and a loose drag (or baitrunner system) would do you well with a circle hook. WTF do I know? I fly fish. Although not so much this year with my fucking PICC line in...which was eligible to be removed half-way through my trip, not that I felt like dropping $150 on an emergency room visit to yank it. So, I kept it in the entire trip. It'll come out tomorrow, that's nice but it didn't help my vacation fishing, now did it?

Anyways, expect a few more of these before I'm done. I'll explain what I've managed to figure out in my half-assed way over the last three years of fly fishing the salt, including the gear I like, the flies I use, and the places I look.

Part two in a continuing series of shit no one cares about coming up in a day or so, basically whenever I hit the publish button. Bet you can't wait to learn one highly opinionated asshole's take on equipment, can you?