Monterey Surf Fly Fishing Report

Evan Praskin reports on 6.6.18

Surf

Good morning good morning, what a fine weekend it was out in the Monterey Bay Surf! Fortunately enough for me it was my birthday on Saturday and the wife let me escape in the AM for some surf fly fishing action. The surf was looking great leading into the weekend, but by Saturday evening a second big swell filled in and made things a bit tougher for Sunday. With light AM winds we hit the surf around 6AM hopeful for some early, low light action…..and we were not disappointed! I met my good friend and mentor Richard Gilliam at the parking lot with our buddy Lee Mitchel who I haven’t fished with for a while. 

As we geared up we stole looks at each others Flys debating which one would catch the first fish, but we all settled on pretty similar Clouser patterns in hopes of a solid striper bite. Well it didn’t take long for us to start finding fish as Richard, after only a couple casts, finds a willing striper. We all followed up with perch after perch as we worked the shore, but we really were hoping to bump into a pocket school of bass. Perch kept us busy for most the morning along with a few dink Stripers, until I finally hooked into a decent birthday fish who put up a pretty fun fight. The water clarity was great and you could actually watch the fish fight amongst the crashing waves (pretty awesome). 

Plenty of holes and pockets to choose from out there so keep moving until you find the one the fish have settled in, this will greatly improve your catch rate. All in all it was a fantastic birthday and I couldn’t of asked for better company. Cheers to the week and tight lines to those venturing out. This year was a great trip around the sun, very much looking forward to what next year brings. Hope you all enjoy this heatwave and find somewhere to cool off, we’ll see you on the beach!