Mackerel on the Fly

I’ll admit that I’m not a fly fishing expert, and despite having tried it numerous times, I often return to my spinning products. That’s largely because I’ve always felt the need to make it harder to catch fish, and that’s what usually appears to happen when I try fly fish. Lately, however, I took a friend out on the sea who was a fanatical travel cast. His quest: to find a Spanish fish on the fly. No only did it happen, it happened again, and again. And I learned a ton from watching, including these advice on how to catch fish on the go.

• These fish can often move quickly, causing small but frantic feeding frenzies. When you need to move the boat a few hundred feet to get back in the action, do n’t try to reel all of your fly line back onto the reel. It takes a lot of time to reel it in and finally re-cast the series back out. Fly anglers may continue casting after moving the line away from the fish by keeping the line out on the bowdeck and turning the catamaran over. The angler wo n’t have to worry about flinging their line across the boat after stopping because the captain can turn the boat sideways before stopping.
• Allow a few seconds of sink-time after casting to the optimum range but before stripping the channel again. It’s also a good idea to use a falling range or at least a fall tip.
• Use both hands to move your giving up while you’re ready to start stripping the line. Spanish fish like to grab quickly, and one-handed stripping is impossible to do. Keep in mind that even with two hands, it is essentially impossible for a fish to take up and grab a streamer very fast.
• Set the connect with your hands, not the pole, when a affect occurs. You’ll get stripping, so you already have a hand on the line at all times. Hesitate to move the pole into your hand and pull the tip, and your hook-set will almost always arrive a beat too soon.

Or… get a spinning wire, instead!

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