Adam Trahan: Rick, so nice to have met you and fished together! I’m super happy to have made your acquaintance.
“Please use this opportunity to introduce yourself or say hello.”
Rick Mackay: Hello Adam! Yes, it was very nice meeting you guys! I know you will be back this summer and we will do it again.
Adam Trahan: Although I’m not a California resident, I’ve spent a lot of my traveling time there. I believe my first surf trip to the coast was in 1979 or so. My mom took me to Huntington Beach in the 60’s before that but it was my first trip in 79 to San Diego that has kept me coming back.
I was a skateboarder at the time but regularly surfing at Big Surf, the world's first freshwater wave pool. We fully surfed there on a wave that you could get about a good 60 yard ride. I was skating pools and pipes, already started snow surfing but California was the hot bed and Mecca so to speak for our board sports. A friend went with me and took me to Blacks where I surfed first in California.
“I understand you are Canadian, can you tell us your first experiences going to California?”
Rick Mackay: Well to be honest it was quite intimidating. I have spent the past 20 years chasing Rainbows, Brookies, Rainbows, Steelhead and Silvers in a small town of 6000 in British Columbia. I think I inadvertently ran about 7 Red lights in Orange county before I got used to the traffic. Ooops no harm no foul! I did get a chance to fish in Oregon and Northern California on my way down. I caught some nice bows in the upper Sacramento near Shasta which was a great experience. Once I got to Southern California I very quickly realized my Trout days were numbered, hence the switch over to Surf Fly fishing.
Adam Trahan: I’ve read quite a bit about the freshwater fishing in Canada, it sounds phenomenal and truly an adventure for all disciplines.
Let’s zero on on why we are here.
Corbina.
Or at least that’s why I met you and how we got to this point.
We met mostly out of convenience and common interest in this type of fishing. You made some suggestions and we picked up on them. You nabbed a bean and I would have to say the fishing was good but the catching was challenging. I saw a few but opportunity presented itself in the way of sight casting for me, if I remember correctly, in a couple of hours fishing, I had one shot at a fish that appeared to be a Corbina. I lined the fish and that was that.
I spent a considerable amount of time and effort to get that single opportunity. It was 100% worth it as I am a lifelong fly fisherman and enjoy all the aspects of being one. Although Phoenix (where I am from) is nowhere near a Corbina beach, it is the logistics, the equipment and effort that I enjoy getting to the cool early mornings of the Pacific beaches.
“Please use this opportunity to introduce yourself and clue us in on why you enjoy pursuing Corbina.”
Rick Mackay: Well when I got here I knew I would not be keen on driving my F350 up to Bishop very often. I lived on the convergence of two great rivers and could fish for wild Trout 7 days a week with little effort back home.. As a fly addict I started to look for my fix. There is very little info online minus Al Quattrocchi’s Book “the Corbina Diaries”. Now as a Stubborn S.O.B I did not read it until I had them figured out as I enjoy the ground work as much as the pay off. In hindsight his book could have saved me some hardship. Once I get something figured out I lose interest hence why I’m more interested in teaching people this year than beating my numbers from last year, However Al’s book did lead me to his Instagram account which did give me some ideas for a base to start off. I also met a gentleman named Kevin Greene on the beach. He showed me his flies which was also very helpful. Another honorable mention is my now friend Kent that I fish with here and there. All good fly guys with a healthy passion for fly fishing. Before I met them all I knew is that Corbina are the species that fly guys seemed to want to catch here and that they have the reputation of being tricky to catch. THAT got my attention and the grind was on.
Adam Trahan:I watched you fish for a little bit and a couple of times during that session, I recognized something you did over and over. You move in a linear fashion with the pushes and pulls. Steps straight forward and steps back, casting at the perfect time to intercept Corbina.
“Can you comment and or speak to the positioning when actively casting for Corbina?”
Rick Mackay: Yes there is some of that depending on the power of the swell. That day we had some steep beach and fairly strong waves. I will say that some days that technique is not always needed. The reasoning behind that is you need to match the speed of the waves and at the same time keep your line straight to your fly. If you stand static it's very hard to keep a direct connection to your fly. If you have bend in your line you will either not feel the bites or miss them when you set the hook because of the delay that occurs while your line is straightening out. Also if your fly is not coming in contact with the bottom you will have very little hope of catching Corbina. Most days I am moving forward and back wards but also side to side or even pausing my strips and mending my line to get it back to straight. The waves typically do not come straight up the beach and straight back out so you have to adjust.
Adam Trahan: Ok, so you have spotted the Corbina, you have cast and caught, released. You either have your picture or are ready to catch again.
“How are you searching before casting, what’s going through your mind?”
Rick Mackay: Depends on the grade of the beach. If I'm sight fishing they are in real trouble. I think it's the easiest way to catch them but that way is too condition dependent if you want to fish when time allows you to. With sight fishing watch them to see where they are going and plop your fly in their path. Two or three short strips and you can watch them key in on the offering. Don't cast at them or they spook, Lead them. It is very fun don’t get me wrong but what do you do on the days you don’t see them? How do I catch the ones you only see briefly? Gave me a new challenge. Fish are typically pretty adept at letting the current take them to the food or the food to them. Identify structure. Seams, Rips, and troughs. The current in this situation is likely taking food to them. More powerful rips, fish the side that the current is feeding water into the rip. Less powerful rips you can fish right in the rip. Also if you are not fishing a flat and you are fishing a steeper beach you have to watch the receding water. Once you are good at spotting their swirls and wake in the receding water that indicate fish you can count on them being in the trough following the current. Study the current and guess where that fish has moved and it will likely come up the beach again. Lastly if you aren't really seeing any fish at all you can do what I call ‘knocking on doors” to see who is home. This involves walking a lot. Take casts at anything that looks “different” on the beach. Once again cast near Rip tides, cast at the darker spots in the water (holes), cast at the seams that are created by incoming waves breaking over structure, cast at the spot the birds are feeding on the beach or in the water. Don’t post up at any one of those spots for long just travel. So that’s what is going on in my mind hahaha ALOT.
Adam Trahan: When I’m fishing for Corbina, I’m somewhat opportunistic. I typically have a Merkin style fly tied on. I’m initially walking across the sand to the water scanning for structure, looking for crab beds, analyzing what is in front of me. If I see bait crashing with a cast, forget Corbina, I’m going for whatever is after the bait.
Although most of my saltwater experience of beach fishing is in the Sea of Cortez chasing a few species in the surf, the flats and the estuaries, some of this pertains to the environment of the Corbina. After going online now with Al Q and now you, and catching Corbina on my own, I’m starting to see a very specific style of hunt.
That is what I am starting to shape in my skill set specifically for Corbina.
I thought I was hunting Corbina some twenty plus years ago but what it ended up being was that I was chasing a smaller species of croaker, the Cortez Croaker. As I get deeper into my search for California Corbina, I can see the hunt for the two is completely different. The Corbina are actually going to be easier for me!
“What other saltwater species do you pursue?”
Rick Mackay: I chase Leopards in the winter when they are congregating to spawn. I have only caught a few small ones but I will eventually get a big one I am sure. The usual suspects, Spotfins, Yellowfin Croakers, Surf Perch, and Halibut. I do also spend time on my paddle board chasing the Spotties, Calicos, and Halibut.
Adam Trahan: I had a day up in Venice where I caught Yellowfin Croaker that was so much fun. I was on Corbina patrol and I wasn’t seeing any. I did not yet have the tell tale vision that Al Q had yet to correct in me. I was fishing too far forward standing in just over ankle deep water sending casts and catching in the small crashing surf in the dump and giving no movement to my presentation. Just casting to where the small waves were crashing and kicking up sand. All I had to do was time my cast and I was hooked up.
My morning with you, as I wrote previously, I had lined a fish and that was it.
“So you have spotted a Corbina and how are you positioning your cast? How far do you lead?”
Rick Mackay: Well I mostly answered this above but on lead length specifically I try for 5-8 feet in front.
Adam Trahan: What type of movement are you giving the fly?
Rick Mackay: What Al was trying to tell you seems to be most beginners biggest challenge. I used to cast as far as possible and Corbina were banging off my shins. It’s a right of passage I think. Spotting fish that are tailing or sliding back out is easy but once you can tell that a small V or swirl in the white water is a fish you’ve hit expert level. As for my fly movement start with studying how their prey acts. If you go watch Sand crabs get washed out of the sand they typically look like they know they are in trouble and frantically try to swim back down into the sand. I like to strip in short pulses of threes with a rest and repeat. I also keep the tip of the rod pointing towards the horizon so my fly lifts up, plops back into the sand and repeats three times. Trying to get attention and at the same time looking like my bug is trying to burrow to safety. I typically know I am stripping too fast if I start catching Perch because they are willing to eat higher in the water column but Corbina rarely do.
Adam Trahan: Ok, I think you know where I’m going with this…
“So you see and or feel the take, the bean takes it, can you take it from here?”
Rick Mackay: I know people will disagree with this but I trout set. I have fished so many hours that my brain is fast on the set. I know a lot of guys say strip set. I will let you all decide. As for the fight, relax and enjoy the ride. Let them run. If they run left point your rod tip right and vice versa. Turning a fish's head tires them out quicker. You bring any feisty fish to the beach,river bank, or boat too quickly and you up the odds of losing them. Once you feel they are done, time an incoming wave and walk backwards dragging them up on the sand. As for handling and taking pics it is no different than any other fish. I literally start taking my phone out of my pocket halfway through the fight. I have been a catch and release advocate for most of my life. They are hearty compared to Trout but get 'em back in there asap.
Adam Trahan: Nice! Thanks for taking this interview but I would like to explain a little more on why I do what I do.
I have always fly fished but in the 90’s, I was a lot younger and I was deep into other sporting pursuits. I had lived in Hawaii and that’s where I learned to surf the significant powerful swell of the South and North shore. The West side was my favorite, Makaha and further down the road, Yokohama Bay, third dip. I can still see Kaena Pt in the distance…
But on the East side is where my sporting literally took off. I learned to hang glide the massive airwave at Makapuu. My calendar was chock full of diversity! I had come to all of this from learning to skate pools and the Central Arizona Pipeline as it was being built. I was surfing at Big Surf, the very first inland wave pool. In the winter, I was skiing early on as a young teenager but I had seen this snowboard in an Australian surf magazine, Tracks, they actually they called it a snow surfboard, the Winterstick. The year was 1980 and I moved to Utah to learn a deeper skill of snowsurfing. The Winterstick factory was there in Salt Lake City and the champagne powder up in the Cottonwood Canyons…
But this is not about me, it is about you. Rick, standing there in the parking lot, we spoke about other things we did and do. I found out where you were from…
“Can you tell us a little more about your other pursuits?”
Rick Mackay: There are so many. I spent most of my teens competing and aggressively snowboarding. I was getting free gear from Burton in the early 90’s. I moved to BC and did that for a while but after a while the jumps and rails turned into backcountry access snowboarding via snowmobile. I had one friend perish in a crevasse and a few years later one taken by an avalanche. I knew that I was living on borrowed time doing this 80 days a year. I grew up skateboarding just like you. I have broken both arms twice and both wrists 5 times. I broke my sternum on a rail and by the time I was 25 I likely accumulated 10 obvious concussions. I also fractured a vertebrae in my lower back. When I was 32 I broke my right arm so bad it took two plates and 12 screws to fix. That was when I realized it was time to chill out! I loved board sports but they took a toll. I also pursued big wall rock climbing which I also had two close brushes with death. Once in a rock fall and once in a surprise lightning storm. I also am Canadian so hockey was always mixed in there with baseball in the summer. All of the above was why I was so happy to fish. Instead of pushing my mental/physical limits I would be out enjoying serenity and obviously the unique challenge involved trying to fool nature.
Adam Trahan: The Internet is how we meet. As much as I dislike parts of it, I have meet the coolest people from using it. My wife for one, we meet online and are now married 20 years. You, Al Q and many more, too many to list, people I’ve meet from using the Internet. Like I wrote, back in the 90’s I was hang gliding a lot. Back in the desert I was flying cross country and I would drive my bus over to Torrey Pines. They would actually open the gate for me and let me sleep in my bus down at the cliff's edge. It was so freaking cool. I can’t believe it myself looking at how things are now.
A friend of mine taught me how to make web sites back in the 90’s. This was truly an interesting time. I was blogging about my fishing before it was called blogging. I’m doing the same thing now that I was doing back then. I used my interest in the internet to wean myself from hang gliding. So many of my friends died doing it and many were better than me.
This was before Facebook, back in the America Online days, AOL it was called. It was a place where everything was at. Forums on your interest but I did not like it. I wanted outside of captured content moderated by “the man.” Able to create my own thing which is what I learned to do in my own way.
Long story short, Facebook is doing again what AOL did, it captures the masses in one place. It’s easy and it’s fun and well, it is very cool.
But it isn’t doing it yourself.
You are captured and there are rules.
I need more than that, I need to be free to do and say as I please so I continue to blog.
But we meet at the Facebook Forum, “California Surf Flyfishers.” Wow, I’m already getting a little nervous just writing that. It's a pretty cool forum. I enjoy participating but again, it just makes me nervous to invest a lot of my time there. I feel much better about linking my work, sharing what I do that way. It's not lost if someone doesn’t like what I say or do.
“What if I accidentally broke a rule?”
“Am I going to piss someone off with writing about their Facebook forum and they will delete me?”
In todays world, I completely believe in free speech but I also believe in moderation and social media is really funny about that.
I see that you participate there. I like what I read and there are others on Corbina Patrol there at that forum.
“What do you think of social media Internet forums in regards to sharing your interests online?”
Rick Mackay: Adam, I would like to plead the 5th on this question. Let's just say I enjoy the circle of people I interact with on social media. Social Media pertaining to fly fishing is weird. People are very guarded. To be honest I won’t show my spots on a river or beach because I don’t want fish bonkers knowing them. To each his own on CNR but I won’t make it easier for them. Now when it comes to tips on becoming better at fly fishing and tying I have no problem with that. Pages with zero info and only hero shots….who’s got time for that?
Adam Trahan: This interview will represent about 6-8 hours of time writing, formatting and our communication on it. It is fun for me as I’ve completed 60 or 70 of this type of interview.
I really like “Tail” magazine. They do a great job at capturing the things I’m interested in as far as saltwater fly fishing. Living inland, I kind of dry up during the winter off season. As much as I love the ocean, my lifestyle might appear to be surf influenced yet I’m definitely a desert rat with a degree in diy fly fishing travel.
At home, we have canals to move water through the city for irrigation and such. Those canals have a couple of types of BIG carp in them. They are quite a battle and are fun to fool.
“Do you do any carp fishing?”
Rick Mackay: Big time! I am guilty of calling them trash fish in the past and then I caught one. Holy do they pull. I was led to believe they are also hard to catch but they are not really that tough. Corbina are way harder. Typically I'm stuck fishing in less than Ideal locations for them but I am still willing to brave the grossness for them so that says something. They are a great sight fishing species that grow large. One of the only freshwater species to give me arm burn.
Adam Trahan: Catching big carp is a fun game. I like the battle yet a big part of my fly fishing is the type of environment and travel to it. I grew up fishing small streams and that type of fly fishing has taken me to some really beautiful destinations.
Brook trout refuse to live in ugly places and Corbina live by the same code.
Sometimes I will read about a stream or fish in a great destination and then I’ll put together a DIY plan and execute it. As a stream fisher, my two favorite trips have been fishing for trout in the mountain streams on islands. I’ve caught an old strain of stocked but now wild rainbow trout in Waimea Canyon on Kauai. And I’ve fished quite a few streams in different watersheds in Japan.
“Do you do any plane travel for fly fishing?”
Rick Mackay: Not so much but Bonefish do interest me. I think a boat is in order so I can continue to DIY around here.
Adam Trahan: Although I’ve been interested in Corbina fishing for a long time, I consider myself a beginner. Not to fly fishing, but learning the behavior of Corbina.
I’ve caught bonefish but they aren’t surfers like Corbina.
“Can you tell us more, targeting new Corbina fly fishermen (and women,) what are we keeping in mind when hunting for them? What are the most important things to keep close when stepping on the sand looking to catch them?”
Rick Mackay: Look for crab beds, Look for birds, watch for swirls in the receding waves. Don't stay stationary and don’t continue to do the same thing that hasn't worked in the past. Also there are a lot of sand crab and worm patterns out there. Profile, size and movement are the most important. Don't get discouraged they are not the easiest target species but once you figure them out catching them will become more consistent. Most importantly watch out for people in your back cast!
Adam Trahan: I use a couple of different six weights, a 9’ G.Loomis and an 8’6” fast CTS fiberglass rod that I had made.
“What makes a good rod for Corbina?”
Rick Mackay: I use a 6Wt and swear by it. 8 is overkill and will tire you out quicker. 6 wts have a better bite feel as well. Corbina can take the fly really softly sometimes. I like a 9-10 ft fast action for cutting through the wind that's usually present while fly fishing on the wide open beaches.
Adam Trahan: I actually think the type of line you use is more important than the rod. I really love my sinking line. It’s actually a freshwater line that I repurpose for the salt. That thing just lays down straight and it’s easy to keep tight and feel takes.”
“What kind of line do you use and why?”
Rick Mackay: I use a 6 IPS 30 ft sink tip with an intermediate running line. Cortland makes a good one as does S.A. I use this to get my fly down to the fish. Simple as that. These are the two that seem to take the abuse the best and not tangle. With these types of lines I unravel them and attach the sink tip to something and before reeling it onto my reel I stretch them out (not too much) before I reel it onto my reel. They will tangle a lot less if you do
Adam Trahan: If I had one fly to choose for Corbina, I would use a pink Merkin variant. Somehow, I think you may not answer the same…
“Can you give us some words about the flys you use and crafting them?”
Rick Mackay: I have caught them on many different flies. You can see them on my insta account @westsideflyfishing. Mostly size 8 hooks but sometimes 6. Merkins definitely work but I’m a fly tying addict and have developed a few that work just as well. Catching fish on your own creations is just too satisfying to ignore.
Adam Trahan: “What kind of vice do you use?”
Rick Mackay: I'm not fancy when it comes to a Vice. Right now I am using a Peak rotary vice that cost $250. I would much rather have a $1000 reel than a $1000 dollar Vice.
Adam Trahan: I want to thank you for being patient with me during the process of this interview. I know it’s going to turn out well.
“Please use this opportunity to say anything you like in closing.”
Rick Mackay: Thanks for taking the time to set up this interview Adam. I know you do this for the same reason I do. The love of the outdoors and fly fishing. I hope anyone that reads this learns something. Get out there and enjoy it and take your wins and losses as lessons.
