David Siskind | Sunday, 2 February 2025
I was at the beach Wednesday looking for surf perch or halibut. There was also a possibility of striped bass near the outlet of Ballona creek. I was fishing a checkerboard while walking north and fished a no-name weighted blue and white streamer - sort of a clouser with synthetic bushy wing - on the way back south. A couple of bops on my head reminded me of a video from a couple of years ago by Gunnar Brammer. Gunner is a Canadian streamer fly tier and designer who I think currently lives in Minnesota. While I don’t buy everything he recommends, he’s obviously a knowledgeable and skilled fisher adept at casting big heavy flies. He advocates years of practice (I can get behind that) because, he says, “Alls you want to do is fish for musky because everything else is pointless.”
In the video “How to Cast HEAVY Flies” he discusses the difficulties of casting heavy flies with low wind resistance. We’re all familiar with the “clunk” or jolt at the end of a straight overhead back cast and how this clunk can be mitigated by a drifting back and “catching” the fly at the end of the backcast. Slipping the line a bit can also take some of the energy out of the clunk. Gunnar finds it easier to use a constant-tension or oval cast to keep everything moving smoothly, eliminating the kicks and tailing loops that can result from premature deep rod load/unload at the beginning of the forward stroke.
He then explores the concept of weight balancing. He credits Mark Sedotti and Long Island charter Captain Ian Devlin with the term. A weight balanced fly is a heavy fly that is constructed with shape or materials providing enough wind resistance to prevent the clunk. A balanced fly will cast smoothly with a conventional overhead cast allowing more carry and longer shoot than the constant-tension casts. Anyway that’s what he says and it works for me. While fishing the beach I struggled a bit with the checkerboard which is heavy and has little wind resistance. Heading back south with my more wind-resistant blue and white casting was much easier, longer, and more accurate. An obvious problem here is that wind resistant flies are apt to sink more slowly than slimmer ties. So a balance between the need to get the fly out to the fish and the need to get it down to the fish could be in conflict. I don’t know. It will probably take me a long while to sort this out. I can imagine a fly that might have good balance and yet sink quickly. It still has to look edible. I didn’t catch anything Wednesday.
The continuing display of American dysfunction continues and events seem to be accelerating. I want to but can’t take my eyes off the crazy. Fuck these guys all. They really can’t stand prosperity. Who raised them? I wish I could be confident of a benign outcome.
David Siskind