Al Quattrocchi on Corbina Patrol
This is my story, the story that I write while on the couch, dreaming while I’m awake, early in the morning, weeks before I go. I’m searching tides, surf forecasts, things That will affect my fishing. It costs money that isn’t in the family budget so I must be careful but it costs nothing to dream, the cost is in the execution and thats what I’m after, making the dream real.
Looking back to how I started is not hard to understand, it’s a cyclical interest based on the calendar. But I need to go back to the beginning, where the fly fishing started. That would be around my early childhood, like when I was 10. I went camping with a friend and his dad to an area near St.George Utah. We car camped next to a stream and I was given a quick lesson with a fly rod. What worked for me was gripping the line on the cork and with about as long of a line as the rod, flicking casts to small trout in the stream. I caught fish and we ate the, so began my quest as a fly fisherman.
Moving forward a couple of decades, I was flying cross country in my hang glider. It was not unusual to take off from a big mountain top, circle up into the sky then race downwind at cloud base looking to fly as far as I could. It was a wild glide filled with Joy and terror. It became way too much, the fear of dying being suppressed by the love of my family, I used fly fishing to quit and thats what I did.
I had been fishing one weights in the mountains of Eastern Arizona for brook trout and a ten-inch trout was a pretty big catch. I had a three weight for larger streams and fish and a five weight for the Colorado River. I was a small stream fly fisher, but I knew it was the sea that I wanted. Heck, I was a surfer, a fly fisher, I needed to just do a little homework but what do you do in the middle of the Sonoran Desert? This was before the internet was popular, mid nineties.
The calendar went like this, winter was a time to fish the tailwaters, spring was for the streams I could get to in the lower elevations that were clear, summer was alpine streams and fall was too.
Fly fishing the beaches was best done when it was summer, hot, miserable weather at home in the evil empire that is Phoenix. The fishing in the Sea of Cortez was best the hotter it was at home. Usually it was hot and windy there in Rocky Point. I had been building rods at the time, putting them together from components. You are a rod builder when you do that. Later on I would become a rod maker when I began making rods from bamboo, splitting it, shaping it, making rods from rough materials. But at the time I built a ten weight to be able to cast and play the fish in the Sea of Cortez. That ten weight was absolutely perfect for me to learn the pull from the sea and that’s exactly what I did.
My first flash was a HUGE corVina. It was a howling wind and I was still able to affect a cast. The fly was a simple white feather, a Lefty’s Deceiver, on a forty foot cast. I was casting into a channel in the first estuary and the surface of the water was being sanded by the wind. It was silver, the sun so bright and the spray everywhere. Hot, miserable but still going after it, alone. No one was going to go with me.
At the time, and even now, the city was big, millions of people, lots of fly fishers yet early on and the Internet had not shrunken the world yet. So I charged at it full speed alone. That’s what I was used to when I flew from a big mountain. I flew my flights alone so driving a couple hundred miles alone to go fishing alone wasn’t really a big deal. It’s thirty years later now and as I lay on the couch writing this, dreaming of going next week, I’m going alone again.
It’s what I do.
So immediately the line goes tight and that big ten weight bends over and the line quickly slips through my fingers. The line feels like it’s tied to a trailer hitch and the car is driving off! I finally get things slowed down and I start making progress getting my line back on the reel. I can see this big silvery fish, I have no idea what it is but its mouth is yellow orange, a stark contrast from the mercury color of its body. I lock down on the reel and back up on the sand, my fish slides into the shallows and up on dry land flopping. I loosen the line and go over to it and look at it. It’s the largest fish I’ve ever caught and it has some sharp teeth. I get the needle nose pliers out and back out the hook. I’m careful to keep my hands away from its mouth and I pick it up cradling it under my arm.
It's heavy.
I walk into the water again and release it and it swims off.
I had just caught my first fish in the Sea of Cortez and it’s a huge Orange-mouth Corvina. It’s still the biggest fish I’ve ever caught and it’s my first fish from the sea. I’m still chasing that fish some thirty years later.
I’m writing the same story over. I don’t care. That’s how life is. It isn’t the film I see in the fly fishing film tours. Nothing like that. I can’t be caught, although I enjoy those films and I enjoy reading about the adventures of others, they aren’t my adventure. They use the same ingredients, the same spices but they cook the meal differently. We do have recipes but mine, which I’m writing for you is mine.
I cook for myself chef.
I learned how to write from a fly fishing chef. He knows how to do it, we cooked it together. We cooked our own meals and we ate from each others plate. We have moved on but he is out there doing his thing still.
So am I.
Still cooking with friends from around the globe.
I look forward through the rear view mirror. I spend a lot of time looking trough a pane of glass, a windshield and I really enjoy driving to my destination. Corbina is the target this and all time. The papers I wrote started south of the border, now? I’m headed west searching for the same adventure.
Rocky Point, Sea of Cortez, Mexico late 1990’s
There are others who I’ve read about that look for these fish. They’ve been doing it too for a long time. At one point I wanted to join them, they are Corbina fishermen too. I’ve been at it for almost thirty years chasing those dreams. It’s what I do but I live in the desert. Getting to know the mar means a long drive over terra.
I belong, not to their patrol, to my army of one.
Fishermen catch the fish! But I can’t be caught, I do the fishing and my target is not people, nope. I’m not looking for that. It’s taken me a while to “figure it out” but here, I look to capture a feeling only I can create and it seems my bag is pretty full.
Critics are like parasites, they need a host to survive. Somehow I’m impervious to that. Here, these words and my dream are not yours but I will share them with you. I’m looking for the one who gets it. These days, people need to feel like they are part of the crowd or that they lead the crowd. The need people.
I travel thousands of miles to escape the crowd and find myself.
Time now to make my pack list.
Three days till go time.
Time.
With that, it's time to get off the couch.
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Thursday, July 25, 2024
Bolsa Chica, California.
Take off 7a.
I loaded up my SUV and pointed westbound for a few hours drive across the desert. The stereo playing songs off of my iPhone, the GPS loaded up with the destination and giving me data on the way. I typically know what I want to hear, the soundtrack and subsequent lyrics often matching ideas or moods in my story and my dreams. This trip is no different. I started out with early local New Wave bands from Phoenix recorded in the early 1980’s.
My first stop is Perris, California.
My whip, Subaru Forester
One of my other sports is radio controlled soaring. I started when I was hang gliding many years ago but recently picked it up again. I had recently interviewed a World Champion at it, Vincent Merlijn from Ukraine and my friends in Phoenix flew a design of his, the 2m. I wanted one fully built and it had arrived from Ukraine at Soaring USA in Perris. I asked if I could save on the expensive shipping and the travel rash involved and soon the GPS had my destination in sight.
I pulled up and got out and was meet by Jeannie and Alex, a third generation r/c soaring pilot. We began to chit chat about the reason I was in his area. We told stories and Alex told one from another manufacture in Ukraine. The gentleman who owned the company there also made drones for the war. Someone at a r/c forum mentioned his company and address in Ukraine and the next thing that happened was the factory was targeted and subsequently bombed.
War.
So sad. No more sailplanes from this factory.
Soaring USA radio controlled soaring business
I loaded up my sailplane and drove to Bob Marriotts to purchase a few Corbina flys. I drove the final 30 mins and checked in to my hotel. I took a nap and got up and walked over to my favorite restaurant in the area, “the Himalayan” and ordered Tikki Masala and Chilli Paneer, heavenly.
Walking back I rigged up and got ready for the 30 min drive to Beach X at 5:30a.
…it’s foggy as I arrive. I forgot to buy my fishing license! Do I chance it?
No.
I fumble with my phone as I wait the five mins for parking to open. Pull up the CA license online, get the card out, done. About that time, I am motioned to the guard shack, pay the parking fee and am on the move.
I had planned the trip a week or so ago and Al text me the night before I left inviting me to meet him. That was coincidental. I accepted and I’m headed to the spot on the beach.
Al said, “I’ll find you…”
I put the stripping basket on and walked to the lifeguard station and looked around, I’m at the right spot. So I stripped some line out and started casing.
Al literally appeared out of the mist!
An epic first meeting, very pirate like.
