Atlantic sials are famous for aerial antics, fighting as much above water as below.

Out of Miami, sailfish are a bit more scarce, and much fussier. Most Miami and Upper Keys sails are caught on live blue runners or pilchards fished under kites. I know many anglers who have tried to tease the sails into fly-casting range by bringing in the kite, but it just doesn’t seem to work very well. You don’t have enough control of the bait and the sail either catches the bait and eats it, or simply loses interest when the baitfish “disappears into the sky.” The only person I know who has caught a sail on fly in Miami is Bill Lindsay and that was a dozen years ago or so. Pate caught one at the Fort Lauderdale Billfish Tournament last November, winning the tournament’s first-ever fly division prize.

In the Lower Keys the odds improve, but the technique changes. Off Key West, for example, you can’t slow-troll a hookless live bait for 10 minutes without a barracuda or mackerel chewing it up. The same holds for dead baits. There are just too many other kinds of fish around for effective teasing. Nevertheless, Capt. R.T. Trosset has caught several sails on fly and has guided his anglers to several more by anchoring up and chumming with live bait. Trossett runs a 31-foot open fisherman out of Key West and a typical winter fishing day starts with loading up the baitwell with several thousand pilchards and then live-chumming off the reef. This aquatic buffet brings tuna, kings, wahoo and often sailfish right to the boat. He has found that the most effective flyrod technique is to throw a pilchard-size streamer with a clear intermediate fly line.

Actually, this style of chumming paid off for South Florida angler Mitch Howell while fishing west of the Dry Tortugas with Capt. Rob Hammer, who knows this area’s wrecks, rocks and humps intimately. Hammer and Howell were live-chumming a wreck in 160 feet of water about 20 miles west of the Tortugas when three sails came up, hot as can be. A few more pilchards just added to the excitement. When Howell cast a Pilchard Special fly, a fish hit it going away, just like a good sailfish is supposed to. The fly stuck squarely in the corner of the sail’s jaw and 30 minutes later Howell had his first sail on fly. Fly fishers out of Key West also sight-cast to cruising sails along the color change, which can be surprisingly effective. Sometime in March and April, cobia, big jacks and sailfish migrate along the color change for about two weeks. You need a boat with a tower and you simply idle along looking for fish. The rougher it is, the better the fishing because you can maneuver within casting range without spooking the fish which seem to attack anything they see. The tradeoff is fly casting into a 25-knot wind from the bow of a rocking boat. A word of advice: Bring a big laundry basket or a commercially made flyline container. During a trip last spring, the color-change sailfish run was on and I managed to put the fly in front of three fish, all of which ate, but none of which stayed hooked very long.

This brings us to another problem: Sailfish are almost impossible to hook when they are swimming toward you. If they swim up behind your fly and eat it, any attempt at setting the hook will either pull the fly out of its mouth or stick it in the bill, which is very temporary at best. The trick is to cast the fly away from and beyond the sail so that it turns and hits the fly going away, resulting in a hookup in the corner of the mouth. This works great with a teased fish that is spinning around and looking for the food that just escaped. Nine times in ten, a cruising sail or one happily chewing on pilchards in a chum line will come up behind the fly and hit it coming at you.

Ballyhoo patern pilchard flies.

Trossett caught his personal best sailfish casting at the color change. He was on a busman’s holiday with his son when they spotted the sail. It was oblivious to the boat and ate the fly three times before managing to get itself hooked. Trossett claims it was at least 65 pounds (and repeats the story every time he sees me) but I still haven’t seen any photos so I’m not about to concede my state record just yet!