RE: OR Coast Report

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 20:24:50 -0700

Great report, Tim! I entertain my someday-CND-Atlantis two-hander-ownership fantasies when I read reports like that.
A great site for surf/perch fishing is garybulla.com He's a SoCal guy, but there's one fly--the Gremmie--which is one of his standards. Sounds very similar to the Surfpercher, and easy to tie. 

Tom


From: "Tim Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: OR Coast Report
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 19:40:30 -0700

I use a 7-weight just because I have a 5-piece that I can carry easy with

all the gear in our van but a 6 would be good too.  I think a 300 grain 
head
would probably overpower anything lighter though you could probably do a 
200
grain on a 5-weight.  They are basically a turbo-charged bluegill and put 
up

a good pull given their size though they don’t make runs like a corbina in
SoCal will.  The NW surfperch are quite a bit bigger than the SoCal ones so
at least you get a much better fight from them.



Basically you wade out as far as you are comfortable and safe, in the NW I
only wade to where I get hit from knee to low-thigh by a “normal” wave, at
times I get hit crotch high.  The fish like the edges of rips which can be
pretty dangerous, especially on an ebb tide.  The further south you go the
safer and warmer it is so you can wade out a bit more and deeper, in San
Diego I’ll be getting hit in the chest with the occasional big wave.  I try
to walk a beach at low tide to see the troughs and slots and any structure
that the fish can use and then go back to fish those areas.  In SoCal you
can look for the surfers because they find the spots that hold the perch in
the slots they paddle out in or I find them when I fall off my boogie board
and end up in deeper water.  To fish you cast out, let the line and fly
sink, and start stripping back when the flood is in and letting the line
feed out during the suck.  I do a twitchy, bonefish like retrieve but with
no stopping.  After a while you get a feel for it.  I like to cast right at

the base of one wave and then the fly will usually suck out a bit right 
away

and sink better then you can start retrieving when the next wave starts to
hit.   Oh yeah, you NEED a stripping basket, I do this about 10 days a year
and still spend about ¼ of my time untangling line.  For flies all you need

is an orange or red bonefish style fly.  They eat Pacific Mole Crabs for 
the

most part and the crabs carry and orange/red egg sack and scoot on the

bottom.   I use the Surfpercher Red a lot in the NW, it is basically a 
Crazy
Charlie with dumbbell eyes, a yellow marabou tail and a red marabou wing 
and

a red or gold diamond braid body.  Further south I use more sand shrimp and
ghost shrimp flies.



A good intro to surfperch fishing can be found in John Shewey’s “NW Fly
Fishing – Trout and Beyond” book, that is what got me first interested.

There is also good information on it in several of Ken Hanley’s books – 
“Fly

Fishing the Pacific Inshore” and “Fly Fishing Afoot in the Surf Zone” - and
he’s written some articles in SW Fly Fisher magazine on the subject.   You

can find surfperch from the tip of the Olympic Penninsula down through 
Baja,
I’ve gotten them in Washington, Oregon, NoCal and SoCal and just haven’t 
hit

Baja on the Pacific side yet.  In SoCal you can get shots at corbina also
which are about as hard as permit to catch, I’ve landed one in probably 15
days fishing down there.  You can also get flounder and shovelnose
guitarfish (sand sharks) on the beaches there and you foul hook a lot of
stingrays instead of Dungeness crabs.




I do need to take a few of these to eat one time, I’ve heard they are 
pretty

good.  I’m going camping down there again in late August so I’ll probably
whack a few for dinner then.



Tim



  _____

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Steudel
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2005 6:32 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: OR Coast Report



Cool report, how well do they fight. Did you use a 5 - 6 wt?



Did you just wade out into the surf and fish?

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tim Harris
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2005 5:27 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: OR Coast Report

I just returned from a trip to Arch Cape on the Oregon Coast.  Each morning
I got up at 5 – 5:30 and hit the beach for surfperch for a few hours and
this year did very well.   I fished Cannon Beach the first day and got two
perch in the first 15-20 minutes from 5:45-6:00 and one was the biggest
surfperch I’d ever seen let alone caught, the thing had to be pushing 2.5 -
3 lbs.   I hit the same water the next morning and got a few normal sized
perch.  Along with perch I would foul hook about 2-3 Dungeness Crabs each
morning too, they don’t fight well and can be extremely tough to release.
I fished Arcadia Beach the third morning and got skunked plus found the
beach a bit more difficult due to some nasty rips going on.  This morning I
fished only an hour back on Cannon Beach and had a great morning,  I landed
7-8 perch and many were very good sized ones of 1.5 – 2 lbs. and LDR’ed a
few more.  All fish came before 6:00 a.m.  I guess the earlier the better
since I got all my fish before 6:15 regardless of the actual tide level.

All fish came on a Surfpercher Red in either #2 or #4 with very big 
dumbbell

eyes and a 300 grain head.





Tim




























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