Justin Nguyen

Captain Justin Nguyen owns Cast A Line Fly Charters and is one of South Florida's top peacock bass fly fishing guides. He learned to fish on the Mekong River in Vietnam, became the first Vietnamese fly fishing guide in the world, and ran a Great Lakes steelhead operation before adapting his tight-cover casting to South Florida's canals. In his In The Spread video, Nguyen teaches urban peacock bass on fly, from reading structure to casting, fly selection, and gear, including how to catch them without a boat.

Instructor's videos

Justin Nguyen learned to fish as a boy with a bamboo pole he made himself, on a branch of the Mekong River behind his family's home in Vietnam. That start says a lot about him. Nguyen is a resourceful, instinctive angler who has followed fishing across the world, and along the way he became the first Vietnamese fly fishing guide anywhere. Today he owns Cast A Line Fly Charters and puts anglers on peacock bass and largemouth in the canals and waterways of South Florida.

The road here ran through the Great Lakes. After his family settled in Northwest Indiana, Nguyen saw anglers catching steelhead on the fly, landed an eleven-pound fish within days, and was hooked for good. He built a steelhead guide operation and ran it for over a decade, working the tight tributaries where you fight endless trees and undergrowth to reach the fish. That is where he learned to cast a fly through, around, and under cover that would tangle most anglers on the first try.

When Nguyen moved to the Fort Lauderdale area in 2017, that skill translated perfectly to South Florida's urban fishing jungle. The peacock bass here hold along canal edges, culverts, and structure in water you can often reach on foot, and few fish reward an accurate cast into tight quarters like they do. Nguyen has a real knack for reading where a fish will stage to ambush a meal and how to trigger the bite, and he can pull up to a spot and have you hooked up within minutes.

He fishes fly and conventional, from a boat or on foot, and he teaches all of it: casting technique, fly and lure selection, the right rods, reels, lines, and leaders, and how to find productive water in the first place.

In his In The Spread video, Nguyen breaks down catching peacock bass on fly in South Florida, from targeting structure to casting, fly choice, and gear, including how to fish these aggressive exotics without a boat. If you want to catch peacock bass on the fly, learn from the man who turned a Mekong River bamboo pole into a life on the water.

Personal Website: https://castalineflycharters.com/