Well, it's been a while since I last posted something, but here's a tackle-oriented surf fishing report from Saturday afternoon's excursion to Pt. Reyes. For a change, I hauled out a completely new & different fly fishing outfit to the shores of Kehoe Beach. Instead of my usual 0- or 00-wt fly gear, I brought the "big stick" to the beach: a 12-ft B'n'M Buck's BCCR Custom Crappie rod. The graphite 2-piece rod is intended for reaching freshwater panfish & the like in those hard-to-get, weed-choked ponds & lakes using a line & bobber setup. Although it strongly resembles a fly rod, I haven't read about (or seen anyone) fishing with the long rod in such a manner.

As far as I know, the panfish rod doesn't have a fly line rating, but I'd consider it to be a 6/7/8-wt based on its soft, slow taper. When loaded, the 12-ft rod starts to bend about a 1/4 of the way from the butt, gradually increasing in curvature towards the tip (maybe it's a supersized noodle rod?). In some regards, I suppose BCCR could be considered the "poor man's" spey rod due to its length, but I'm not sure if it has the strength to match a conventional spey or two-handed fly rod.

Being such a long beanpole, it felt kind of awkward to cast, but then again, any fly rod heavier than a 1- or 2-wt feels awkward after fishing with light-weight noodle rods for a long time. After some experimenting, I was able to match the lengthy rod to 30-ft of T8 & 15-lb black Amnesia on a Ross Rhythm-1.5 reel. Despite its wimpy nature, the 12-ft panfish rod seemed to do a pretty reasonable job of shooting 75-80 ft of line with a well-timed double-haul. I think I could still trim the T8 back another couple feet to get the BCCR to cast the T8 more efficiently.

The main reason for bringing the 12-ft rod to the surf was to find out whether I could keep the terminal line clear of the inshore hydraulics when fishing troughs, channels & other deep structure. The basic idea is to "high-stick" the outside of the surge zone & prevent the shooting head & flies from getting caught in the surging inrush, especially during the incoming tide when the surf is in its most turbid state. For the most part, the lengthy rod did a nice job of steering the shooting head & tippet away from the surge zone...




The immediate downside of fishing with the soft, oversized rod was the loss of "feel" for where the flies were located in the suds. With 3 flies dangling on the tippet, the entire 30-ft of T8 plus another 50-ft or so of Amnesia sagging in the current, I didn't have a good sense of when the fish made a grab or tug on the other end - the strike response was very sluggish. The diminished sensitivity was quite a handicap compared to the lighter fly gear I've been accustomed to using in the surf. Nonetheless, I managed to coax a half-dozen redtail to make a suicidal grab for the Slinky Seducer patterns - it was still a thrill to feel the pull on the big stick from the feisty fish...




In the future, I'm thinking of adding a fighting butt to the handle for additional leverage - it'll definitely come in handy when Mr. Stripah or Sharky comes along & decides to take the flies for a ride. Otherwise, I'm looking forward to trying the BCCR in the surf again, perhaps after making a few more tweaks to the shooting head.

TL's,

- Mark
(aka "Myflyzdown")