Web casting call hooks a big crowd

First LIGHT catches hundreds of coruscations of barred surfperch as they zip through waves at Rincon Point near Carpinteria.

Standing on the threshold of a wet wilderness, waves rising and flattening and breaking again on the sand, I work a fly in a trough between the breakers. The tap comes suddenly, followed by a quick strip-strike to set the hook, and my six-weight rod pulsates as the fish struggles to get free. I release my 13th catch of the day into roily brine.

Not long ago, this experience was solitary, yet 50 other fly fishers share this shore, an orchestra of anglers casting to the rhythm of waves.

Beneath cabanas on the bluff behind the beach, some 30 other fishers talk tackle and techniques and tell stories over chorizo and eggs.

Many know each other, but most never met in person until this December morning.

We come from the Internet, faces and flesh behind bulletin board and chat room handles such as “coastalflyfisher” and “n2mybacking.”

Once disparate and disembodied, we have coalesced into a kinship 85-strong bound not by creed or geography, but by modems and a passion for a special type of fly-fishing unconstrained by seasons or trips to the eastern Sierra, but united by a taste for saltwater.

We use websites catering to fly-fishing on the coast, such as www.fliflicker.com and www .garybulla.com, to overcome an anonymous metropolis and freeway-fragmented communities.

We swap files, share tips and discuss tackle online. And, more and more, we do fishing trips.

“Big Muzz,” the cyber instigator for the Rincon trip, is John Muslin, a graphic artist from Torrance. He ties his own flies, wraps his own rods and fishes three days per week.

During a fireside chat at the Long Beach Casting Club last year, he asked a cadre of Web-surfing, saltwater fly-fishing addicts: “If a bunch of us who post on the bulletin boards can form separate groups that fish together from time to time, why can’t we all get together to fish the same beach at the same time?”

The unanimous reply: “If you post it, people will come.”

They came to Rincon Beach from the Bay Area and San Diego, Los Angeles and Ventura, loaded with food and drink and tackle and experience ranging from expert to novice.

Not far from where I was fishing on the beach, Craig Crosby hooks another fish, so I make my way to him, pausing to watch as he plays the fish, brings it to hand and releases it.

A lifelong surfer, he’s new to fly-fishing. Turns out he lives less than a mile from my house in a separate Capistrano Beach subdivision.

We both fish at Doheny State Beach, yet in the workaday world our paths never crossed until we met on the Internet, and later on the sand.

Energized by the Rincon gathering, the group is growing. The next big fishing rendezvous is scheduled for autumn when surfperch mating peaks. We’re planning a raffle to raise money for groups working to keep the beaches clean.

By midmorning the sun climbs high above the horizon and the fishing slows, though 30 anglers continue to work the waves and some catch surfperch.

“Did you ever think you’d see so many fly fishers on one stretch of beach when you started doing this 20 years ago?” asks Doug Martin, a Sylmar contractor who runs one of the websites.

“No,” I reply, “but I had no idea that there would be an Internet, either.”

Jerrold Paul Shelton is a licensed guide and contributing editor for California Fly Fisher magazine.