The Armchair Outfitter

You may not know his name if you don’t live on the Gulf Coast, but you know his work if you’ve ever seen one of us wearing “the uniform.”  You know, Costa del Mar sunglasses, cargo shorts, shirt with a fish on the back, Crocs or flip flops, optional sun hat.  It may have occurred to you to wonder, “Who’s the guy painting all these fish?”  He’s that guy on the right in the photo, Guy Harvey.

While he does paint fish wonderfully well, his other pursuits also benefit those of us who love the sea and its inhabitants as Dr. Harvey obviously does.  The Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation funds research and educational programs to encourage marine conservation and best management practices.  Although I prefer linking  based solely on payola, if you’d like to learn more, here’s Dr. Harvey’s website:  http://www.guyharvey.com/  No promotional consideration was provided in exchange for this link.  Dang it.

This June, the Sporting Wife and I met Dr. Harvey at our local Bass Pro Shops in Spanish Fort, AL.  He was gracious enough to autograph and personalize pretty much anything for a long line of people, and the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation pledged $1 for every sale of a Guy Harvey licensed product at our Bass Pro Shops that day to fund research and educational programs at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab.  I appreciate that the money stays right down the road, and I admire anyone who has so many irons in so many fires and still gives his time to a worthy cause.

Casting distance is far less important than accuracy in most forms of fishing, but in this respect surfcasting is not like most forms of fishing.  It’s a big ocean, and all things considered the farther you can heave your offering, the more and bigger the fish that will see it.  When it comes to your rod, size matters.  There’s no way to say it that sounds less suggestive.  My surf spinning rod is a 15-foot Diawa, and I’ve heard every rod joke you can imagine.  I’ve also gotten several questions along the lines of, “What are you going to catch with that thing, Jaws?”  The uninitiated observer doesn’t understand it’s the size of the weight and the distance sought, not the quarry, that dictates the out-sized equipment.  The rod is a lever, and with a long enough lever and a place to stand, one could move the world.

In order to launch the bait, you have to “load” the rod.  Fly fishers will recognize load immediately as the appropriate fancy-pants way of saying ya’ gotta’ put a bend in it.  The one-armed wrist flick you use with bass gear is just not an option with a rod longer than most vehicles.  You can Google the terms “pendulum cast” and “off the ground cast” or “off the beach cast” for some good videos explaining the mechanics, but here’s my basic technique in a series of photos.

I begin with my back  to the surf and a good length of line lying on the sand.  Half to two-thirds of the rod length is about right, although at first this feels extremely awkward.  You want that rod moving and dragging the weight along for a good distance to induce the required flex.

Note that my right hand is close to my body and my left had is kicked out as far on the rod butt as I can get it.  In turning to face the surf, I have swept the rod around in an arc and lifted the bait off the beach.  It’s already moving along and the rod is beginning to load.

As the rod comes up and around, I step into the cast and use a push-pull motion with my hands.  The left had comes back sharply while I drive forward with the right.  If all goes according to plan, the end result is a 4 oz. pyramid sinker and a live shrimp on a circle hook headed for Mexico.  The force you can generate with a cast like this is amazing.  More than once I’ve had a cast spoiled by the line slipping out from under my fingers too soon with spinning gear even though I use two fingers and grip the line for all I’m worth.  I have not tried it, but I understand some folks use a golf glove to prevent line burns.

The timing takes a while to master, but the cast doesn’t require nearly the speed one might think to achieve distance.  You must feel the weight all the way through the cast.  Any hitch in the cast which allows the weight to catch up with the rod or get ahead of it will unload the rod and induce vibration that will destroy the cast.  Give it a whirl and you might surprise yourself as half the spool plays out into the breeze.

“It’s my belief that history is a wheel. ‘Inconstancy is my very essence,’ says the wheel. ‘Rise up on my spokes if you like but don’t complain when you’re cast back down into the depths.’Good times pass away, but then so do the bad. Mutability is our tragedy, but it’s also our hope. The worst of times, like the best, are always passing away.”  – Boethius, “Consolation of Philosophy”