COMPOSURE UNDER PRESSURE by Alan Czenkusch

It’s really pretty amazing, when you think about it, just how fast your brain can analyze a complex situation, process information, and select the best course of action out of several possible ones. It is also pretty clear how fear can accelerate this process.

There I was on the California coast, trying to figure out this business of catching surfperch. I was in a wetland training class in Tiburon, and I’d brought a fly rod along from Colorado. Class was over for the day, so I’d split for the beach. I was splashing along in the Pacific at a place called Stinson Beach, because I’d read this new fly-fishing-in-the-surf book by some guy named Shewey, who seemed to know a lot about these things. There was one chapter that went into some detail about how to find, and catch, surfperch. The key thing, he said, was to find a cut, because these cuts concentrate surfperch food. Cuts are gaps in the sandbars which parallel most beaches, and water drains back seaward through them. The book had a clever diagram illustrating those cuts.

It was a little less straightforward than Shewey had suggested, finding them. The diagram wasn’t exactly what I was seeing. But I kept fishing, wading along the beach and casting to the mud line—the change from dirty wave-stirred water to clearer water further out. Shewey said these fish patrol it looking for mole crabs and such that the surf dislodges. Directly, I caught one, about eight inches long, and I was amazed at how much power there was in such a small fish. It hit a #6 Wooly Bugger, like we use for trout at home, but tied on a stainless hook, in a hideous blend of red, pink and orange.

Still kind of puzzled, though, by not being able to identify one of these cuts, I scrambled up onto a house-sized rock. From this new perspective, I was able to spot a place in the surf where the waves didn’t break, and there was a definite current flowing out away from shore. I climbed back down off this huge rock, and every time I stripped the fly through the cut I got a tap or two, like a fish too small to get the fly into his mouth, just snapping at the pink marabou tail. I was focused on that cut, but out of the corner of my eye I saw a shape in the air. Vapor plume! I’d seen my first whale yesterday off Baker Beach, just across the Golden Gate. Between getting bites on every cast and maybe getting to see another whale I was pretty excited. So now I was doing two things-
working that cut, and looking for whales.

What I wasn’t doing was paying attention to the waves coming in. And then here came one that was huge. It had to be three or four feet bigger than the usual two-footers. My first impulse was to freak. But then I caught myself: “There’s no need to panic; you know Shewey’s procedure for handling waves.” For small ones, you just stand there. Larger, turn your bod sideways and stand there. Bigger yet, time a jump to coincide with the crest. Ones that blot out the sun, no problem. Just turn around and run like hell.

Well, this one coming sure is one of those blot-out-the-sun deals, and it’s getting taller. Even so, I was impressed with how fast I analyzed the situation and chose the correct solution. Calmly and confidently, reassured by knowing the Shewey wave technique, I turned around and ran like hell. For maybe two feet, right into that house-
sized rock.

The wave picked me up and spiked me into the sand.

Happily, I was neither crushed nor washed out to sea. I was, though, embedded face first in the beach, with many, many gallons of water on top of me. As waves do, it eventually receded, and I got up with sand and kelp streaming from my glasses, and fly reel, and hair, and clothes. I squished back to the car, laughing. I suspected that the Pacific was, too.