I wish I could tell the name of the fly I was using but I don't know it's name. It's fairly small, about a size 6, has beaded-eyes and is mostly orange. It looks like a sand crab but all dressed in orange. I've been told that orange is the magic color when fishing for perch in the surf. This trip helped solidify that impression. I started tossing a small (size 4) green & white clouser but had no takers. Then this orangey-thing in my fly box caught my eye and I gave it a try. I can't remember if I picked it up at Bob Marriotts or if I got it from Gary Bulla when I took his surf clinic. However, any smallish weighted fly with lots of orange should be the ticket to perch action.

I was tossing a type 6 sinking shooting-head on my 9 weight rod, stripping fast to maintain contact with my fly. I'm still learning how to cast a shooting head so I wasn't getting tremendous distance, but most of my grabs were within 20-30 feet and right near the end of my stripping and just before I was going to start my next cast. All of my fish were caught as I cast out into the breakers. I had no grabs on my casts that were parallel to the beach.

Hope this helps. I wouldn't have had a clue on how to do this if our fly fishing club (Kern River Fly Fishers) hadn't had an outing to one of Gary Bulla's surf fishing clinics back in mid-July. We had 13 anglers come over from Bakersfield and Gary spent 4-5 hours with us showing us how to survive in the surf. It was well worth the small cost. This time, I was by myself, but I felt well prepared to battle the wiley surf perch.