Two-Handed Barred Surfperch

     Barred Surfperch Season 

    I admit to being a saltwater junkie & a frequenter of the wet sand. You’ve heard of the Fountain Of Youth? Right there. Over on the other side of HWY 1 spread out to the horizon like a spilled Margarita. Having settled in for winter on the Cali coast, where jowser barred surfperch hunt the surf line, I’m heading to the beach on days when the tides are right.

Barred surfperch here average 1 to two pounds, with a better grade in the mix during the Winter months, with occasional fish to 4 pounds. Adapted to life in the rough neighborhood of the surf zone, barred perch are incredibly strong fighters – & they eat the fly very well. A 2-pounder might rip you into the backing. A 3 or 4-pounder will jelly your knees & make a believer of you.

Long rods have always been the choice of surfcasters, & for wet sand fly casters, long, two-handed rods are a fun tool, able to throw heavy flies the necessary distance in the buffeting & often windy conditions encountered on the beach. I’m seeing increasing numbers of two-handed casters on the central & northern California beaches theses days, & a distinct methodology developing.  The beaches of Monterey Bay, with good fishing for striped bass, halibut, & surfperch, have probably inspired the greatest refinements to the game.        

The cast of choice is the two-handed overhead cast, or ‘switch’ cast. This is essentially the same as the ‘conventional’ overhead cast we make with a single-hand rod, but with the addition of a hand on the rear grip to lever the forward cast. Rods of 10 to 12 feet are best for this. The overhead cast is necessary for throwing the 15 to 30-foot fast-sinking heads needed to get a fly down & keep it down in the turbulent surf zone. It is extremely difficult to pick up & aerialize a 30-foot sink-tip & heavily weighted fly with an anchor-point cast, particularly in the waves – hence the switch cast.

Light Spey or switch rods in the #3-#4 weight class are popular in the surf, though I prefer a little more rod, my favorite, a 12’6” #5 Spey. But any longer than that & it becomes difficult to throw the overhead cast.

 Sand, & micro-sand, are ever present in the surf environment, & it gets into everything. Having sacrificed a couple of expensive reels equipped with sealed bearings & disc drags, I’ve come to rely on inexpensive click-pawl models lacking those delicate mechanisms subject to ruination.

Though shooting heads are serviceable, most experienced surf casters come to prefer integrated lines. Surfperch are often very close in, requiring the fly to be stripped nearly to the leader connection, & an integrated line accomplishes this without the irritation of loop-to-loop line connections bumping & catching through the guides. Also, windy conditions on the beach raise hell blowing coils of light shooting line out of the stripping basket, & the heavier running sections of integrated lines stay put in the basket & are easier to handle with cold, wet hands. Though shooting heads generally cast farther, the difference in casting distance is negligible, I think. And a well-matched integrated line will cast better than a not-so-well-matched shooting head.

Remember, it takes a lot less weight to load a rod performing the overhead cast than it does to load a rod with an anchor-point cast, so it’s best to choose a designated surf line with a weight rating near the lightest end of a rod’s grain window. For example, my #5 Spey has a grain window of 350-550 grains. The Cortland Compact Type 9 (sink-rate, 9ips) with 30-foot sink-tip I’m using is rated at 375 grains.          

The leader is simple. I rig a semi-permanent, 2-foot leader butt of stiff, 20 pound test fluorocarbon with a small barrel swivel attached to the tippet end. (Seagar Red Label is the best I’ve used, & available at any Walmart). The swivel is necessary, as the surf will tumble the fly & twist the casting line without it. A 2 to 3-foot tippet of 12 or 15 pound test fluoro, depending on conditions, is knotted to the swivel. Though I’m not real fond of multiple fly rigs as they do tangle, I often prospect with a second fly tied dropshot style at about the middle of the tippet section. The dropper works best unweighted.

 Surfperch baits include Clouser types, Girdle Bugs, Surf Merkins, Mole Crab imitations, & Comet style flies. All but those used as droppers are weighted, either under the body, or with coneheads or dumbells. Shades of dark olive, blue, purple, rootbeer, red & pink, & combinations of these, are good perch colors.

Are surfperch good to eat? No fish better. Surfperch are the ingredient of choice in the original Baja fish taco. They are fairly plentiful & I drop a few in the pack & we enjoy a lot of fresh fish tacos, wintering in Cali.