If fly fishing for sailfish, dolphin, or one of the tuna family appeals to you, but a shortage of time or money rules out going to the Bahamas or Costa Rica, don't write this off as an impossible dream.

These battlers are regularly caught off Florida's coastline on spinning, plug and general tackle, and they're just as viable targets for the flyfisher.

Moreover, you can do this from your own 20-foot center console boat, and without necessarily chumming with live bait.

Though it's still in its infancy, big-game fly fishing is becoming a challenging option for anglers who want to tangle with Florida's bluewater species on a light rod.

In the past couple of seasons, many firsts have fallen to this developing discipline. Capt. Scott Hamilton and Jim Gray caught the first sailfish on a fly entered in the West Palm Beach Fishing Club's winter contest. Jupiter captain Butch Constable led professional golfers Nick Price and Gary Hogan to a double hookup on sailfish fly fishing in only 10 feet of water off Singer Island.

Sailfish are certainly among the most challenging species to attract to the fly, but there are numerous others that qualify as dependable targets. Bonito (little tunny) have long been a mainstay, due to their abundance and voracious appetite for small, colorful baitfish flies. Tripletail and dolphin are commonly taken, as are king, Spanish and cero mackerel. Every method from trolling to chumming to sight fishing has proven successful on one species or another.

Capt. Scott Hamilton of West Palm Beach has put in a substantial amount of time at this game, so things looked promising as Mark Bullock and I headed out with Hamilton on his 21-foot deep-V one calm morning.

A well-rigged boat, proper tackle, and attention to details are critical in this game. An inspection of Hamilton's rig reinforced the importance.

Because fly line can and will catch on just about anything, a minimum of clutter is essential. That means having your cockpit free of any unnecessary items, which may include various antennas and backup rods in vertical holders. You'll need room to cast, and space to manage your line.

Hamilton goes the extra distance, and rigs a makeshift autopilot with a tie-down used for boat covers (available at marine supply stores). It consists of a heavy suction cup with a loop of shock cord. The cord goes around the upper spoke of the steering wheel, over the suction cup, and then the cup attaches to the glass on the compartment door in front of the wheel. The poor man's autopilot holds the helm steady, allowing Hamilton to attend to the fishing.

We carried a basic assortment of fly rods to cover a variety of fish. Two 10-weight and two 12-weight outfits were rigged and stowed in horizontal holders. One of the heavier rods we rigged with floating line for tossing poppers at large fish. The other 12-weight held a sinking line for deep fishing. The 10-weight rods were similarly rigged.

The preference for antireverse versus direct drive reels is a personal matter, but on all of our rods we carried the latter. By setting the disc drag at around three pounds of pressure, then using the exposed rim of the reel for additional drag, you can respond quickly when a fish makes a sudden move, applying more or less drag as needed.

Because it's often tough to sink a large hook into a fish with a fly rod, the flies we carried sported somewhat smaller hooks ranging from No. 1 to 3/0, with the larger aimed at catching sailfish and tarpon.

Chartreuse is Hamilton's preferred color for dolphin, and either light blue or bright blue works best for tuna. Greenie and flyingfish patterns are effective on both dolphin and tuna. The tuna flies are four to five inches long.

Sailfish often come in close to shore to feed on schools of ballyhoo and we decided to spend our first two hours fishing for them.

The first step was to deploy a teaser bait, which consisted of a hookless ballyhoo fished off a spinning rod. We also had another rod rigged with a second teaser, a plug, from which the hooks had been removed. Mark tied a Cannon Streamer, a surface-swimming, blue-and-white fly with sparkle, to an 8-foot leader with a 20-pound-class tippet. Blue-and-white, gray-and-white, and blue are proven colors on sailfish.

En route to our starting point south of Boynton Inlet, Hamilton briefed Mark on the sailfish drill: "When a sailfish comes up on the teaser he's going to grab the ballyhoo sideways. He'll try to turn the bait around to swallow it, but the tension on the line will pull it out of his mouth. When the fish lets go of the bait I'll reel the teaser in toward the boat. This usually excites the sail, and often I can bring it close to the transom.

"When he's close enough to cast to, I'll pull the teaser out of the water. At that point cast the fly beyond the fish. The fish is going to be looking for that bait in all directions. He'll find the fly, turn, and take it going away, if we're lucky."

We set the teaser out in 50 feet of water off a small reef, 75 feet behind the boat. The fly rod, securely placed in the rod holder on the port side of the boat, was ready for action. Thirty minutes after putting out the teaser, a smoker-size kingfish took the teaser, rocketed 10 feet into the air and promptly disappeared with his free meal.

The second assault on the teaser occurred a half-hour later. This time Hamilton managed a quick cast, only to have the fly severed from the leader. "Must have been a cuda, or perhaps another kingfish," he muttered. This finished our quest for an inshore sailfish, and we moved offshore in search of dolphin.

Hamilton usually sight fishes for dolphin, running until he finds a likely place to cast, but when it's cloudy he'll troll teasers, as it's hard to spot fish without bright sunlight.

We worked north along a weedline, about two miles offshore, in 560 feet of water. Soon a big bull dolphin came out of the weeds, attracted to the teaser. He was completely oblivious to Mark's presentation of the fly, and nonchalantly headed back to his lair in the sargassum. A few minutes later we had our first dolphin strike from a feisty 5-pounder that completed a series of leaps worthy of an Olympic gymnast, before being subdued and released.

There was no further activity after an hour's trolling so we decided to go back inshore and fish along the color break in hopes of finding blackfin tuna. By this time a strong southeast wind had come up, which made trolling southward against the ripping north current very slow work. We did have another attack on the teaser, but the blackfins we sought weren't there. Mark managed to pick up a bonito, however, which gave him his isometric workout for the day. Slow fishing days, however, provide time to discuss tactics and Scott filled me in on several of his techniques.