Photo by Jim Solomon
My buddy Jim made the call, we picked a new destination and stayed with our plan. The day before we both dropped a few fish due to the poorly set up sloped beach.
He was spot on. This new spot was set up good, with lots of deep structure easily viewed on the minus low, incoming tide. The incoming water starting to fill in the deep sand freeways with hungry fish. The sightcasting window was short, the magic window which I refer to the proper amount of water on the flat that allows the fish to tail and dive into the newly tide covered sand crab beds had unfolded. Fish were coming in like cord wood on conveyor belts. Getting your fly to lineup properly required many repetitive casts. Finally I rolled one through a gang of seven fish, slow strip, heart pumping, big blowup and one confused Corbina running frantically to Catalina with an injested merkin in its crushers. Shortly beached and completely hand stripped in, (faulty reel drag) cpr, catch, photo, and released!
Shortly after I decided to take a long walk down the beach and I found some new productive real estate and repeated, hooking a second fish in a similar group, hand palmed the reel and slid the fish up on the sand. Ended the session with a double.
Started and blanked with a pink merkin, I switched to a grey Surfin Merkin after my buddy Jim had a strong take on the grey, which I credit to hooking both fish. I had three other short takes on grey. It was a good move to switch flies. Moral of the story, don’t be afraid to change flies.
flies, sand & surf 
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