Urban Fly Fishing can be a very strange thing! There are days where everything goes just as you had planned and then there are days that leave you scratching your head in disbelief. Last Saturday my wife’s younger sister was out from Vegas and they decided to go get their hair done, so I picked up the fly rod and off I went. Now I only had about two hours to fish before dark, and I decided to do a little recon over at Alamitos Bay. I hooked up on two Spotted Soles on a sandy beach right away (they both came off I might add) and the bite went dead. Until I stumbled upon a little make shift dock and flung a Clouser Deep Minnow underneath it. After about 30 minutes I had caught 5 Lizardfish and was having a blast. While catching the last of the 5 fish a guy who had set up shop behind me to see what I was catching dubbed me “The Lizard Wizard”. It’s amazing what joy Fly Fishing brings me, and every day I become more and more addicted to the ways of the Urban Fly Fisherman.
It seems that I have come across a hidden talent for deciding to go fishing on days when I shouldn’t. This Saturday was the third or fourth time now in the last 6 months that I have decided to go fishing on a day when an organization is holding a function at that very same spot. It was apperantly a California wide beach clean up day that if you signed up for you got free tickets for a day to Disneyland (according to a 4 or 5 year old little girl with a gleam in her eye while picking up all kinds of trash along the beach).
I arrived at one of my spots near Seal Beach to wet a line in the salt and try my hand in the surf and along the jetty. I decided to go so that I could get some time in before this huge storm came our way, and for about 30 minutes it was nice and calm.
Then the people came in droves, within about one hour there were about 150 people walking along the beach eagerly grabbing anything that they could find (most of which actually was not trash it was seaweed among other things). Now don’t get me wrong I think that it’s great to have people out cleaning the beaches instead of destroying them, as I normally see people doing. Though it does seem a little strange to do something for the good of our environment, just because you are getting Disneyland tickets for the effort (but that is besides the point).
Unfortunately with all the people I didn’t feel comfortable casting, especially when a group of little ones gather directly behind you saying “mommy what is that man doing”. So now I can chalk down a Beach Cleanup, a Meditation Class, Boat Races, The LA River Clean Up, among other things as events that have competed my day of fishing. Man do I know how to pick them!!!
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