Surface iron fishing - my favorite

One of the excusable faux pas of being older is repetition. So if there is repeats here - sorry. Watching the most recent iteration of Inside Sportfishing made me think of my favorite kind of fishing. In retrospect, the first time I saw somebody fishing a 'surface' iron was in 1965 - on a 1/2 day boat out of Pierpoint Landing in Long Beach. I had a Thrifty Drug Store spinning reel / rod combination which at the time worked just fine. Optimo was the brand of the reel, and I think I had a Garcia Conolon rod (the rod was much better than the reel). Bright blue monofilament line - don't recall the brand...matter of fact, it might have been Thrifty brand. I don't recall how or what I was fishing - but I was fishing. A guy next to me was throwing a Crocodile - a gold one. Every time he would cast, he would have a fish. Whether it was a bonito, barracuda or mackeral - he would catch something. I was bait fishing - as I did not know how to do much of anything else. I was fascinated by this guy throwing a lure and catching a fish on every cast. From then on, I had to learn how to fish lures - metal jigs in particular. Around the late 60's, early 70's - I used hang out a lot at the local tackle stores - Payne's Sporting Goods (Tom Payne and a guy that worked for him, Jerry - great light line fisherman), Yo's Custom Rods (Yoshiro Yoshida and the guy that worked for him, Lou - fished on the Holiday with Steve Giffin every Monday....religiously) and to a lesser extent, Art's Tackle. I would ride my skateboard (made in Mr. Creasy's wood shop at Peary Junior High) to all the stores. I remember a trip when Jerry from Payne's was on the Freedom - and caught a 30 lbs+ yellowtail on 12 lbs line at Catalina. What a feat at that time. Yo used to get so pissed when I rode the board in his shop! Yo's was closed every Monday - so they could go fishing. Yo would ride on the Searcher, and Lou would ride on the Holiday. I was fishing on the Freedom a lot in those days - four (4) guys would trade off running the three (3) big 85' boats. Freedom, Liberty and the America. Jim Peterson (passed recently), Bobby Carr (disappeared commercial fishing), Taka Tanaka (owns a tackle shop in Buena Park) and Arnold "Cookie" Cooke - one of these guys would run the boat, and I would pinhead. Moose was in the galley - and whatever he had left over, I would gladly scarf! The only time I recall seasickness - was after eating one of Moose's leftover tamales with chili on top. In those days, I was still trying to figure out how to fish jigs. I did it, but not very well. In the mid-80's, while going to CSULB - I started to work in 'THE' tackle shop (Yo's) and open party boats. While working on the Fury II, I would hang out in Yo's a lot - and started using 10' Sabre 540's. I started with Penn 500's with 20 lb mono - but soon graduated to using 40 lb when I realized fish were not line shy when throwing iron - and lost a lot less gear as well. A full length 540 was a bit light - so I started to cut off a few inches at a time from the tip - until 6 inches was just about right for 40 lb. Carl Newell started to make his reels about this time - and a 338 was Penn 500 size and perfect for 40 lb. So the outfit of choice was a Sabre 540 cut 6" off the tip and a Newell 338 with 40 lb mono. The boat would fish Catalina every day - so I had the rod on the boat - and got to throw jigs pretty much every day during the week. After throwing a lot of different jigs - Candybars became my jig of choice, the larger 112's. The Tady 45's and Salas 7X's were OK. The 45's, good thing I worked at Yo's, I got first look and picked the colors I liked with a concave flat side. The 7X's pretty much all swam about the same - pretty good. The Candybars for some reason always swam great right off the rack. The straight green or mostly green and yellow was my favorite colors. The jigs never really had to be retrieved very fast - and they swam great. Yellows and Calicos just loved these jigs. When the passengers saw us catching fish - they invariably bought these jigs when we got back to the dock. At about the same time, Norm Kagawa just launched his 65' Seaway - Shogun. During winter and spring months - there would be three (3) boats sitting at Isthmus Reef - Danny Kadota on the Mustang, Norm Kagawa on the Shogun and us on the Fury II. Every spare moment I could find - I would be throwing Candybars, Norm was throwing 45's and Danny would be throwing Tady 9's. At times, the Calico fishing on the surface iron at Isthmus Reef was awesome. All we had in the tanks was chummers (small/tiny anchovies not large enough to put on a #4 hook) - which was great for chumming. The bass were difficult for the passengers to catch on the tiny baits - but was great for chumming - and made for an absolutely WFO bite on the jigs. Many days, the crew would take turns on the jig stick and fill everybody's limits before starting to make galley moves. Norm's jig stick of choice was his dad's Lamiglas 6909. It was a 9' stick similar to the Harnells - very parabolic, and great for throwing surface iron. Leon Todd heard about this and made a blank similar - 690J. But you could not beat the 10' rods for distance. One of the problems with the 540 was the diameter of the butt section - it was big, too big for some. That's where the Harnells had an edge. They were long, parabolic, able to handle 40, even 50 lb line - and smaller in diameter around the butt section. After spending some time working on the boats, I worked at Yo's shop. Working there was great. Always heard the latest on where the bite was, what works and does not. In the winters, the long range guys came in and we got to hear all about the 16 day trips and the big tuna and wahoo. Through all the fishing I was immersed in, throwing surface iron remained my absolute favorite thing to do. I have done all sorts of fishing now - and I think I know why surface iron fishing is fun. When done right - you fling the jig as far as you can, and watch the jig swim on the surface while retrieving. You get to see the fish chase the jig - and a lot of times, eat the jig. Adrenaline! Whether it's throwing a Zara Spook for fresh water bass, or flinging a dry fly for trout - it's the visual aspect that gets you going. When you are drowning a worm, the excitement starts when you get a bite - pretty short lived really. But when you are 'sight' fishing - it's a whole new ball game.