Going Long
By Rick Vandenberg
Berwick, Maine 2005
This an article I just finished about my recent bluewater fly fishing trip to Baja California, Mexico. Enjoy. Sorry there aren't more pics.
A fire has burned deep inside me ever since sometime around 1992 or 1993 when I saw a brief segment on "Fly Fishing the World" featuring the then new world of long range fly fishing. I was amazed by the images of the 1st Bluewater Invitational, hosted by bluewater enthusiast Ed Rice and couldn't believe how these fly rodders, as skilled as they were, could catch tuna, marlin, and skipjack with nothing more than a fly rod and of 20 kilograms (kg) breaking strength. Wow! Until then I had never associated bluewater with fly fishing. I thought that bluewater fishing was the realm of only conventional anglers equipped with massive reels and 130 pound line. Even so I remember thinking an "Invitational" ...how could I beg my way onto one of these trips? This type of fishing seemed so exclusive and expensive and I didn't really have any connections I could exploit or the kind of money it would take to go on one of these trips.
At Christmas in 1994 my wife gave me a copy of Trey Comb's new book "Bluewater Fly Fishing". Of all the fly fishing gifts I've been given by my wife, this book was only one of handful than I didn't have telegraph (i.e. drop hints and detail lists) to ensure that she would buy the right thing. She remembered my interest and scooped it up when she was in the fly shop buying me some other fly fishing gadget that I just couldn't live without.
The book only served to further develop my interested in bluewater fly fishing. After reading the book cover to cover at least 5 times I put my energies to better use, or so I thought, by trying some bluewater fly fishing on the East Coast. In fact, over the next several years I tried, with very little success, to go bluewater fly fishing in places like the Canyons off Rhode Island; Long Island, New York; and New Jersey to the Gulf Stream off Hatteras and Morehead City, North Carolina.
The results of my East Coast bluewater trips were always the same. No pelagic fish caught on the fly. Mother Nature would almost never cooperate either. She usually would whip up unfavorable winds and high seas the day of my scheduled trips. Ideally I should have planned better and booked more than one day on the water on these trips but my fishing budget usually wouldn't permit it. So, after years of trying and with exactly zero fly rod pelagic fish caught, I traded in my 12 weight rod for a second 8 weight to chase inshore game fish like striped bass and bluefish in my home waters of Maine. I did take a yearly trip to Newport, Rhode Island to fish for false albacore and bonito. So, I while I had caught plenty of inshore pelagic fish on the fly not they weren't the ones I had dreamed of catching - yellow fin tuna, dorado, and wahoo.
Several more years passed by with little to no thought of bluewater or long range fly fishing until 2004 when my first significant fly fishing first trip, a trip to Panama from wife for my 40th birthday, had to be cancelled. The group I was to be fishing with fell apart when one of the guys wives became pregnant and was due to deliver their second child a month before the trip. Left holding an American Airlines ticket to Panama and no trip to take, I had to reschedule my unused airline ticket before I lost it thanks to new airline regulations. My travel agent suggested that I book a phantom flight, which is a short flight cheap flight, that you don't ever intend to use, but meets the airline requirement that your rebook your ticket prior the original date of departure. So, I booked an American flight from LaGuardia Airport to Boston which left me with a $550 credit that could be used for another ticket, but I now I had year to use it.
Talking it over with my wife at dinner after my booking my phantom ticket, my wife casually said "why don't you see if you could go on one of those [bluewater] fly fishing trips off California?" Man, was she good! Her idea worked on a couple of levels. First, she was right I could use the balance of my Panama ticket to fly to California and secondly I could go solo! Well, of course that was all I needed. Being from the school of thought that 'you don't have to hit me in the head with a tire tool twice' I immediately leaped into action.