two paintings by daniel horowitz.
This artist, Daniel Horowitz caught my eye recently as I was surfing the internet. Daniel Horowitz painted one painting a day for three hundred and sixty five days. his work is very whimsical and intriguing. This project was shown last march at the invisible dog gallery in Brooklyn. click here for more images!
Teresa’s first corbina on the fly. Way to go!!!
Last year I got a call from a steelhead guide from Oregon named Teresa. She was visiting her mom down here in Los Angeles and was mutual friends with some of my old time
Southbay Flyfishing club fishing friend’s, Joe & Jan. Teresa is a real fishy woman, she picked my brain on our local surf and killed it up in Santa Monica last year. I think she even landed a leopard shark.
Well a month or so ago, she emailed and said she wanted to get that elusive corbina tick off her list. She told me when she was coming, the tides were not perfect for sight fishing but I knew there were fish around. I sent her to a spot where we did well the week before. My local sources were still nailing fish, blindcasting (my friend Steve got three this Saturday on a brown sand crab pattern). Teresa had two days to complete her task. The first morning the stars aligned. Here is her email note to me, i love when a plan comes together.
“I’d say this is a very challenging fishery. I had two days to fish it and wish i had three to dial it in even better.
When I actually thought out what a crab pattern tumbling in the surf might look like, on day two, my hook-ups increased dramatically. I blind cast all of the first day, which is the day i caught and landed my first bean. The second day is when I finally saw the fish, watched their behavior and deciphered what a strip might look like to imitate the tumbling of a crab pulled out of the sand by the surf. That changed the game and I started feeling takes and misses, two more hook-ups and one good battle which I lost to the fish and a small halibut, again fair hooked to hand. Day three, I coulda moidered them! Thanks for all the help Al. Without you, i wouldn’t have even known where to begin.
tight lines ,
teresa
teresa caught her fish on a del brown tan merkin ( the original permit pattern)
PS: this week from wednesday through Saturday are prime sight fishing opportunities, if the wind and surf stay down and we get some sunshine it could be great. this tide cycle usually is the last
good shot at getting a bean to eat a fly by sight casting in our area. after this they can be caught but are harder and less interested in the fly, but anything is possible. 🙂
Mike Ward proudly lands his first bean on fly! Congratulations Mikey! 2012 © photos by Al Quattrocchi
July 4th, 2012
Well after my last dismal post, we decided to make a move and fish south of location X. I had had reports that there were some fish moving around. In fact, my buddy Jim had hooked three and landed two a few weeks prior in the same area. He sight-fished all three, watching the corbina chase down the fly, one even took the pink merkin on the drop. I got out a day after and saw fish everywhere but couldn’t get them to eat. That’s corbina fishing! The problem was that there was awesome am sunshine a month ago and now we had the dreaded june gloom to contend with. On a positive note, we had perfect minus low tides which make for good sighting in low light conditions. Well we moved the troops south on July 4th and invited some of our buddies to give this area a shot. This minus low is one of my favorite tides to fish this time of year and based on the last six or seven years has proven to produce many corbina on flies for me and many of my fishing pals. It was game on! The fish were right where we thought they were going to be, staging in each bucket. Mike positioned himself over a nice looking piece of water and within a half of an hour got things started by sticking a beautiful fat corbina, that took off like a bat out of hell. This was a real special fish for Mike, he had been fly fishing with me for almost three seasons and hadn’t landed a bean on fly. He joined an elite group and I was really proud of him for not getting frustrated and staying with it. Mike’s bean was taken on a get merkin. I just had a hunch. I was denied on pink for some reason so I went with smaller grey merkin and immediately got hooked up and landed bean numero dos for the morning. Then Zino walked up and we switched his fly out to a grey merkin and soon after he had bean three on the beach. Two other friends Jeff and Michelle later joined us. They were fishing just south of us. I asked Jeff and Michelle if they had any luck. The only saw a few fish and had a few shots. I told Jeff to move up the beach just north of us and look around, there were quite a few fish. Soon after Jeff’s rod had a bend in it and he connected with bean number four for the morning, he was using a light pink merkin. I would say that was a decent session, 4 corbina landed on flies in a couple of hours. I know to the newbies out there four fish doesn’t sound amazing but corbina are perhaps one, if not the hardest fish to take on a fly in the surf. They will bitch slap the best fisherman, period!
Qman holding a July fourth bean. photo by Zino Nakasuji
July 5th, 2012
now the game was on! they could run but the couldn’t hide. I could hardly sleep the night before. Got to the beach early, about 5:30am, now understanding where these fish were staging. I hit the sand in the early grey light and watched the structure with a keen eye. I began to fire some long casts from way back on the sand into the edges of the holes after seeing a few fish working the edge of the trough. I immediately connected with a big fish that gobbled the grey merkin and taking me immediately into my backing. I like to use 12 pound test (they are not leader shy in the surf) so I knew I could put the wood to him. I landed him a few minutes later. About a half hour later I moved to another hole and saw a group working just on the edge of the trough. I measured my cast and stripped the fly though their kitchen, bam, the water exploded with three beans going one direction and my bean moving straight out. I let him run, got my line on the reel and began to work him into the shallow flat on the edge of the trough. Bean two was in the books. I ended up leaving the beach just shy of 8am when the water started to fill the beach in and cover the exposed crab beds, making seeing fish nearly impossible. My other buddy Jim had a great morning as well, even though he didn’t land a fish, he got four fish to eat the fly, having all four pop off and spit the fly. That to me is still a rewarding effort . These fish will drive you nuts but they are awesome, challenging, humbling and will get you crazy, but that is why we keep trying to push the curve.
happy hunting, get out there, the games have begun….
tons of crabs due to the cooler water temps have the corbina stuffed with indigestion and closed mouths…2012 © photo by al quattrocchi
too many crabs is making it hard for the fish to get excited about the pink merkin so far this season. hopefully the tide will swing. 2012 © photo by al quattrocchi
well, we are seeing a few beans in the skinny, but not many. the june gloom early cloud cover is making things even tougher. my suggestion is wear glasses with yellow lens in the low light, it will help you to see fish. there are some areas that anglers have reported are full of cruising corbina so you will need to search to find fish. my neck of the woods near LAX has been slow, with occasion fish popping up here and there. my favorite spot this time of year was horrible this morning, full of shovels, and rays. so tomorrow I am on a corbina mission to find new real estate. happy hunting…
nice specimen taken on a pink merkin, photo and fish courtesy of Bernard Yin
group shot courtesy of Michelle Bowman
the launch. photo courtesy of Al Q
photo courtesy of Al Q
a clean release by Joe Margiotta! photo courtesy of Al Q
Well when my good friend Conway Bowman asked me to help him put on a carp tournament in Lake Henshaw, I really had no idea what we would be in for. To make a long story short, we combined forces
with the help of good friends, John Loo, Bernard Yin, Kirk Deeter and Michelle Bowman, and developed a tight team of design, writing, photography, social media, sponsors and carp enthusiasts, all in the good cause of promoting sight fishing for carp on a fly. I saw things on Lake Henshaw this past weekend that blew my mind. I am now officially a closet carper and appreciate how cool these fish really are for honing your skills at sight casting! Carp on the surface, carp eating dry flies, what? It was sick. I learned a ton watching all these great carp fisherman do their thing, scouting new pieces of water, adapting to new situations and zeroing in on these finicky fish. The friday prefish was epic with some anglers landing over two dozen fish on dry flies. The fishing wasn’t easy on Saturday, but the guys that had the skill set to adapt their game, ended up putting some nice numbers of fish. I will add to this post with all the stats and awards soon. so come on back, there’s more to come! CLICK HERE FOR CTD RESULTS!
illustration © 2012 al quattrocchi
Me and my buddy Jim Solomon will be talking shop about the opportunities to sight fish and land the sometimes finicky corbina that inhabit our laid down California surf this time of year. Corbina are perhaps one of the greatest local sight fly fishing challenges California has to offer and when sight fished, one of the most rewarding. photo by Al Q
as a teenager growing up near sheepshead bay in new york, i spent endless days and nights surfcasting home-made plugs along the beaches and bays of the rockaways but the boys from montauk were always my real heroes. here’s a sweet video from animalny.com which gives those not familiar with montauk a taste of the salt. click here to view!
photo by alfred eisenstaedt, 1952
as a kid I was always enamored by the fishing stories of Ernest Hemingway. he was a crusty old man with a sharp pen and a unconditional love for the outdoors. the old man in the sea was actually written about his first mate, Gregorio who was with Hemingway from the early 30’s. the stories of cuba and fishing on the Pilar during the hey day of marlin and big game fishing must have been insane. Lefty Kreh’s first fly caught bonefish was caught in Cuba and he always said the fishery there was fantastic. Lefty also said that Castro liked to fish and was actually quite an angler. He won Hemingway’s marlin tournaments from time to time. I can imagine how primitive and adventurous is was back then when the ocean was filled with large pelagics. it is always fun to look back to the past and be reminded of the contributions these pioneers made in our sport the old school way sans fish finders, gps and braided lines…
story about the “old man” cuban fisherman, Gregorio Fuentes who died at the age of 104.
flies, sand & surf 