THE FLY GUYS; ANGLERS ENJOY CHALLENGES OF FLY-CATCHING BARRACUDA.

Byline: BRETT PAULY

``It doesn't have to be exotic to be fun fly-fishing,'' skipper Bruce Dexter blurted halfway through the three-quarter-day charter.

They were bold words that would make highbrow fly rodders rattle their anti-reverse reels in defiance.

Saltwater fly-anglers are fond of faraway locales and foreign fish. Trevally on Christmas Island. Roosterfish out of Costa Rica. Kawakawa in Queensland.

But as aggressive specimens peeled their lines out to sea, Dexter's clients could have been momentarily transported anywhere in the world . . . until the view of the familiar pier in Paradise Cove jolted them back to the reality that they were hunting barracuda in Malibu.

``You don't need your passport. Quality saltwater fly-fishing can be within freeway distance,'' said Marshall Bissett of Van Nuys, a transplanted Scot who has done his share of globetrotting in pursuit of worthy quarry. He might plan his vacations around bonefish and tarpon in Belize and the Bahamas, but his training regimen consists of hooking local barracuda on a 10-weight rod.

``The fight of the fish is as good as it gets once you determine how light the gear is going to be,'' said Bissett, who used this outing as a tune-up for sailfish off Baja's East Cape. ``This is a classic day.''

Indeed, the anglers on Saturday's six-pack charter aboard the Pacific Clipper out of Cisco's Sportfishing in Oxnard exchanged superlatives with the giddiness of schoolchildren on field-trip day.

``There's a fresh one'' was the call after each hookup. ``Another fresh one. Look, it's as tall as a man. Whoa, he's into my backing. Watch and learn, my friend, watch and learn.''

Of course, it was all exaggeration. Rarely did the game go over 32 inches and 5 pounds. (The legal size limit is 28 inches, but all were released per the fly-fishing standard.) And only a handful of the mightiest were able to pull out enough line to spin the reel; having one speed away with the deeply wound backing line in tow was rare.

But that's how anglers enhance the entertainment when the target species is crashing around the boat and rods are routinely bowed and lines taut with the burden of a sleek, sinewy ``stovepipe'' charging on the escape.

Each of the fly rodders brought a dozen or so of the jagged-toothed barries to the boat. Incidental catches of surprisingly tough-warring mackerel, sand bass and calico bass were thrown in the mix. It was one of those fishing days that are so good, when the engines start for the last time you don't want to go home.

``I was giggling all day long and all the way home. It was hot. Every cast for a couple of hours I got a fish,'' said Jeff Dean of West Los Angeles who, with barracuda somersaulting behind him, had a hard time living down his expensive plans to chase brown and rainbow trout on the Kootenai, Elk, and Yaak rivers. ``I'm going all the way to Montana to brag about fly-fishing in Southern California.''

Even Dexter, who has been catering to fly-anglers for five years, one of the regional area skippers to do so, was surprised by the bounty of barries. ``This year they've been biting,'' he said. Normally, he has to motor out to the Channel Islands to put his customers on fish, but here they were in huge schools over a high point in Big Kelp Reef just under the Santa Monica Mountains.

A roaming fish with widely spaced dorsal fins, a distinctive lateral stripe and an infamous maw stacked with razors for teeth, the Pacific barracuda travels great lengths for forage - primarily anchovies, sardines, mackerel, grunion and squid. Each spring and summer, they make well-defined migrations to Southland waters from Baja California. They are so plentiful here in El Nino years - and it appears 1997 may be one of them - it's difficult to catch anything else.

Fly-fishermen enjoy success on Sphyraena argentea because it swims close to the surface, within striking distance of their large, slow-sinking flies - a misnomer, really, because the patterns imitate anchovies, sardines and other baitfish, not insects.

Perhaps more important, the voracious barracuda eats anything that moves and accepts a fly more readily than mackerel, calico bass or other dwellers of the upper water column. Yet barries still offer a major challenge because of their spiked canine teeth.

``It's ugly. They have a bad set of choppers,'' said Sylmar's Russ Hampton, charter master and a member of the Pasadena Casting Club whose mission in life - well, in recreation, anyhow - is to extol the pleasures of ocean fly-fishing upon anyone within earshot. ``They like to bite the flies and swallow them all the way down, especially the smaller fish. So they end up biting off the line.''

The bigger specimens tend to chew the fly directly, so the angler has more of a chance of getting the fish to the boat and into the net for release - and for a ``gift'' retrieval of the fly. If one does manage to get the fly back, it's often too damaged to use or the leader is frayed.

Hampton, who has an ``open-tackle-box policy,'' offered flies for the taking and fellow anglers took full advantage. He was about 30 flies lighter by day's end, representing a retail value of more than $200. But Hampton isn't one to measure such losses in dollars and cents, for he ties flies faster than a kid ties shoelaces.

There was an interval when Hampton lost five flies on five casts.

And there was another period when he got five hookups on five tosses.

One by one, the right-handed anglers would rotate to the port side of the vessel's stern, assembly-line fashion, so that they could make the double-haul cast - a complicated technique in which the line is tossed farther by accelerating the motion - with their stronger arms. When the waiting got too long, an angler would move to the starboard side, false cast toward the bow on the forward cast and throw the line out on the backcast. The ambidextrous Bissett was the envy of all for being able to cast from either side with equal deft.

The fly is left to sink or the line is slowly stripped back in. And when the fish hits, it is usually mano-a-mano tussle - the angler fights the barracuda while holding the line. 'Cuda of this size aren't like dorado; they don't have the shoulders required to steal enough line to make the reel whirl. Instead, the fisher plays his game by applying pressure to the line that was stripped in, like a yo-yo on a string.

There you have it, big-pulling fish . . . without the airfare.

``Fishing is fishing. When it's that hot in your backyard, who needs an attitude,'' Dean said. ``I've been on trips where people put their noses in the air about fly-fishing in Southern California. Too many people going to Montana, like myself.''

TACKLE BOX

When fly-rodding for barracuda, come prepared with this equipment:

Rod: 8- to 10-weight.

Reel: A matching disc-drag outfit capable of holding 200 yards of 20-pound Dacron or 50-pound multifilament backing.

Fly line: Sinking shooting head (with a super-fast sink).

Leader: 6 to 9 feet of 20-pound test.

Flies: Clouser minnow with heavy lead eyes, calico bugger, squid pattern or other weighted baitfish imitations in hook size Nos. 1 to 3/o.

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--color) Voracious barracuda aren't pickey eaters when they're hungry, so they'll strike a baitfish-imitation fly more readily than many other topwater secies.

(2--color) Van Nuys fly-angler Marshall Bissett fooled 'cuda after 'cuda on baitfish patterns.

(3--color) A clouser minnow pattern (with kelp guard), pictured, and otheer baitfish imitations are ideal flies for targeting local barracuda.

Brett Pauly/Daily News

Box: TACKLE BOX (see text)