So, when fly fishing for them, which involves a crippled baitfish retrieve, the slow-moving fly needs to look exactly like the real thing. Big Deceivers and synthetic-winged Puglisi baitfish patterns work well. But Capt. Scott Hamilton, a local guide who specializes in bluewater fly fishing, invented a streamer he calls the "Eat Me" which is deadly. He taught us to use prismatic eyes on our streamers, and to tie on a new fly the second the eyes get knocked off. We also adhere to his theories about fly colors in dirty versus clear water. In dirty water, which occurs frequently in summer due to freshwater runoff, Hamilton prefers pink-and-white, chartruese-and-white and yellow-and-white streamers between five and

seven inches in length.

"Longer than that," he says, "and they just bite the tail end off." Sometimes, though, 10-inch streamers are the ticket, but you have to tie them on tandom-rigged hooks, which is a royal pain in terms of casting and fouling.

When there's a lot of bait around, natural colors, such as olive-and-white or blue-and-white, work best. Clearer water calls for longer leaders, but five feet of fluorocarbon usually suffices. There is some debate about the types and lengths of bite tippet. Both Snyder and Hamilton prefer to use No. 4 wire, but Hamilton calls a 12-inch piece "short."

"I prefer No. 4 wire over the new supple wire that can be knotted, " says Scott, "because a haywire twist has a much slimmer profile than a blood knot or a uni-knot. I think bulky knots lead to refusals. So, even with my haywire twists, I only make three normal twists before the barrel roll."

Because we use it on our conventional gear, Snyder and I mostly use No. 4 wire, as well. That having been said, the knottable stuff is great when the action is hot because it's so easy to work with. Plus, it's easier to tie on very short lengths of it when the fish are picky. And if the fish really exhibit lockjaw, use a piece of 80-pound fluorocarbon and a fly tied on a circle hook. If you can remember not to set the hook, it will find its way into the toothless corner of a king's mouth on 50 percent of your strikes. However, keep in mind that there has to be ample gap between the point and the shank of a circle hook, so use 3/0 or 4/0 circles without offset bends-the kind made specifically for fly fishers. A standard offset hook makes the fly swim poorly.

When you catch a king, or most any of the other coastal pelagic species, other members of the school usually follow the hooked fish up. So, once we hook a fish on conventional gear we begin to sweeten the water liberally with the live chum baits. If there are enough hands on board, we also cut the tails off a few of the bigger baits. They descend bleeding and wiggling, and the fly angler tries to get the fly among them. It's imperative to not make a conventional fly cast-any horizontal presentation only slows the sink rate. Simply drop the fly straight down and shake out the running line by wiggling the rodtip.

But whether you're making a vertical presentation in a chumslick or down to a school you marked on your fishfinder, there's a trick to the retrieve. Yes, it's glorified deep jigging, and it requires a short, very precise upsweep of the rod. If you sweep the tip up much past your waist, you won't be able to set the hook. And when you drop the tip back down, do it slowly. Most strikes come on the drop, so you must maintain enough tension throughout the short descent to set the hook.

Because kings like to strike on the pause, and because the strike is often subtle, the trickiest aspect of fly fishing for kingfish is setting the hook. When fooled by a vertical presentation, kingfish often come back at you. Most people feel a bump and come up a little, which is the worst thing you can do because you can't hook them at that angle and the fish drops the fly

the second it feels any resistance.

"When a king hits a fly, it overshoots the spot by 20 feet or more," Hamilton says. "The fish will hold onto the fly for five seconds or even longer. So, it's best to keep the rodtip down and strip like mad."

In this situation, a Line Tamer or any homemade flyline bucket becomes indispensible. As soon as the fish feels the hook, it streaks back in the other direction so fast that you must clear 100 feet or more of line in a matter of seconds.

"I saw one guy get an earring ripped out of his ear, and we've lost one tennis bracelet, two watches and a cell phone during the first blistering runs," Snyder joked. "And one guy had a pair of clippers hanging around his neck on 80-pound dacron. We weren't sure whether he'd lose his head or go flying through the guides."

But that's the kind of excitement that makes all the work and the ribbing from fly purists well worth it. That and the sense of pride in knowing that such a variety of angling skills went into catching one of the oceans' speediest fish on a fly rod.