Key West waters are famed for smoker kings on fly, over Gulf and Atlantic wrecks.

I recall a summer day while fishing with friend Joel Day at the Wall when it resembled a desert—no signs of dolphin at all. By midmorning we saw weeds and birds working them in 2,090 feet, so we zoomed over, wheeled and dropped back the baits to troll the weedline. A rod bowed, then the other. I reeled a dolphin close to the bow, and kept it in the water. The school came alongside, swirling and slicing a foot below the surface as swiftly as flying parrots. We soaked a chumbag and doled out a handful of frozen glass minnows, and the schoolies lit up.

Joel had a 9-weight, with light class tippet and no shock leader. I fished a 7-weight outfit with a leader terminating in a 50-pound shock. “That’s a good rod for these fish,” he said. The dolphin were under 10 pounds, and every one we hooked did head-over-tail acrobatic jumps. We released them quickly, and we kept enough for ourselves and a few friends to eat that night. Over the radio we heard talk about a blue marlin that appeared in a dolphin school behind another boat, not that unusual an occurrence, and a grand opportunity for anglers who take the time to prepare for it. The report said the fish kept batting the schoolie dolphin out of the water and stealing them. Joel glanced at his 12-weight fly rod tucked into the rack. It suddenly looked kinda light.

While we played dolphin, a sleek fish with stripes like a tiger loomed at the surface of the cobalt water, well within casting range. I saw the fish first and pointed it out to Joel. His head lowered as he locked onto that wahoo, and he headed to the rod rack.

“Nothing,” he announced. “I don’t have any wire tippets rigged up.”

Opportunities like that wahoo are fleeting. Same goes for the cobia, tuna, marlin, sailfish, whatever appears when you tote fly rods to the blue off Key West. You can always scale your fly tackle to the fish you plan to target, but it’s better to be over-gunned than under-gunned, and that goes for kings and tuna, too.

“I carry four rods, all 12-weights,” Harris says. “I’ll rig a popper and floating line on one rod, a steel leader with a streamer on another, and I’ll have another, a fast-sinking line, and finally, an outfit with an intermediate mono line. Also, I use direct-drive reels, which can be knuckle-busters for the novice when there’s a big fish on. But for big fish like sharks, amberjacks and tuna, direct drive fly reels let you apply much more pressure than anti-reverse reels. Serious big game fly fishermen always choose them.

“As the popularity of bluewater and wreck fly fishing grows, tackle companies are making rod-and-reel outfits that are more affordable. No longer does it take a thousand dollars to buy good gear. You can get a good outfit for half that. But it’s worth it to spend the extra money because the fish and the marine environment are so hard on tackle.”

Bluewater and wreck fly fishing doesn’t need to be intimidating to beginners either, and might even be more forgiving than the nerve-wracking world of the flats. Unlike fish with water barely covering their backs, bluewater denizens can be caught without perfect, pinpoint casts or silent stalking.

“Whether a guy has never used a fly rod or he is a first-class fly fisher, he has a chance to catch a big fish on fly out here,” says Harris. “There is more frustration to be had when fly fishing on the flats.”

For a perfect example, juxtapose flats permit with wreck permit. I know of two visiting anglers who fished on their own and were frustrated after days of stalking, casting to, but not hooking a single permit on the fabled Key West flats. So they chartered Capt. Joe Green. Green cut the odds in their favor by talking them into a trip to a Gulf wreck where big permit school, and certainly “let their hair down” much more than when in the shallows. Green wrapped a white pipe cleaner around a hook and said, “Here’s your fly.” They each released about ten permit that day. You might surmise that there was some chumming involved.

FS