Last Saturday & Sunday, I ventured to the northern end of Pt. Reyes to fish Kehoe Beach with high hopes of tackling those phenomenal redtail surfperch using the 0-wt Sage TXL. The waters off the exposed, west-facing shores of the Pt. Reyes peninsula had the clarity of gin & were absolutely pristine despite the rainy weather that swung through the SF Bay area late last week. Fairly mild offshore winds & relatively flat seas prevailed on both days, providing near-perfect conditions for fishing the late afternoon incoming tide into the early twilight.
I fished Kehoe with Craig on Saturday afternoon, then returned on Sunday to pick up where I left off the prior evening. Both days started off somewhat slow - a handful of silver surfperch provided some light entertainment while the tide was still out. Most of the silvers were caught on small flies that I refer to as the Golden Bandits:
There was a wide assortment of beach structure to fish before the tide flooded the shoreline late in the day...
It's been my experience that the redtail tend to bite best just before dusk, especially during high tide. Under graylight conditions, large, dark-colored fly patterns are very effective at triggering the fish to pursue & grab a slow-moving fly in the suds. Consequently, I replaced the Bandits with the high-contrast #12 Slinky Seducers as the sun sank low over the horizon. On both days, the redtail schools arrived within a couple hours of sundown, often moving from one hole to another. The fish appeared whereever a sandbar or sandy shelf dropped off into a deep trough, channel or other depression. At times, the redtails grabbed the flies as the tippet drifted with the current over a sandy ledge. When the bite was really hot, the fish struck on near back-to-back casts, striking with wild abandon & putting up a tremendous struggle on the 0-wt:
The average fish ranged somewhere between 9-11 in., but there were also quite a few larger slabs pushing 15 in. or so in length:
All told, I brought a total of 27 redtail & 13 silver surfperch to hand over the weekend - all fish were released back in to the surf to fight another day.
TL's,
- Mark
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