Flatty was good eatin. I filleted it, then pan fried in a bit of oil and a bit of butter. Garlic bread and mixed veggie on the side, with a dogfishhead beverage.
I did start off by using some of your flies, sandfly, and they worked (on the spinning rod). After I lost 1 or 2 to the rocks, though, I realized that was gonna be a theme. Picked up some big jig heads and white GULP minnow/curly tail thingies, and used those the rest of the time, thus saving most of your flies for later use. The sinking head and the clousers are there for the next trip, and likely will get use on bass as well.
Tim, I don't know what it was like before. There was a rock jetty right up to the coast guard station. There was a little eddy in that corner, though I didn't do any good there and it was shallow and solid rock bottom underneath. To get to the sand bottom, you had to cast beyond the slack water and into the current, i.e. beyond the wall.
I'm sure the rocks could be good at times. But nobody was catching much in the rocks, including me, and it just wasn't worth constant snags.
So with the long heaves, I tended to keep my distance from the wall a bit, because with the big freakin surf rod, I wasn't exactly real accurate with my casts, and throwing one over the fence and into the coast guard yard would have been kind of embarrassing.
