The Fishing Thread

My kid caught this Chinook salmon today. Can't wait to retire and hang out with him.

 

Yummy!

 

Anyone wanna go offshore fishing on Weds (Tues night or Weds morning departure)?

 

Posted in the wrong thread

 

Can’t make it, but I’d like to see what you get. Let us know where you go, I heard it’s really going off right now

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.oc...ortfishing-boats-has-some-owners-worried/amp/

 

Yep this is the buzz in the sportboat fishing industry. They’ve already made the the motors smokeless. I recall the days of old when the sportboats, like school buses, were smoke bombs. Im torn on the new regs that the fleet faces. Good for the air, bad for the pocket book.

 

So that affects 350 boats according to the article. Seems like a pretty miniscule saving of pollution. How bout they go after the 1000s of commercial trucks on the road spewing clouds of smog.

 

Oh they are!

 

The shipping companies have a lot more money to put up to fight the changes. But one day, they too will have to abide as well.

 

From our annual Sierra Trip in May. My first Kamloop-strain trout since we started in '82. Float tubing Upper Virginia with 8 great friends. Released without ever leaving the water. I'll be heading back up in mid-September to enjoy the fall like weather (hopefully).

 

Actually you are confusing smoke and Smog. Smog is photochemical. It takes NO (nitric oxide) and when it combines and becomes stable it is NO2. NO2 is that red tinge that you see in smog. But the good news it decomposes (eventually) into Nitrogen and stable Oxygen O2. You breath oxygen O2, and plants use nitrogen so the world is a greener place and you can breath easy in the long run.

 

I finally had the chance to jump on a sport boat yesterday. One of my life long buds joined in. We got on the Sea Watch out of Seaforth Landing in Mission Bay. Nice light load of anglers and plenty of fish around, but there were a bit reluctant to bite. We were headed toward the 302 bank but we kept finding good kelp paddies and breezing fishing on the way so we never made it. We ended up fishing 22-25 miles out of port, maybe 5 miles outside and below the Coronado Islands. Our fist stop was on a paddy that was loaded with small Dorado but our bait was too big (6"-7" sardines) for most of them to swallow. I got several short bites but never hooked one. Two were hooked and landed. After that it was all yellowtail stops for the next several paddies. I caught two and my bud caught one. He got sawed off in a line tangle on another. The fish started to get picky after that. On another paddy stop I hooked a nice dorado that jumped two before the hook came out. Then the slow pick of yellowtail continued. At about noon, the tuna came up. Bluefin up to over 100 pounds flying out of the water. That was quite a sight to see! We stopped on school after school but like usual, those darn things were shy and wouldn't bite. Eventually were got one to bite and that one weighed about 45 pounds. Then my bud hooked what turned out to be a 30 pound Yellowfin Tuna. Awesome! One more Bluefin was landed, about 50 pounds. Then a school- sized Yellowfin was landed on a trolling feather. That was it. No further bites on paddies or schools of boiling fish. Nice temps, nice seas. Most enjoyable!

 

Dorado! I finally got out to sample the fantastic local Dorado fishing that So Cal has experienced this Summer. We got 5 between us amd although we could have caught more, we agreed that we had plenty of meat to take home so we called it a day at noon. Slight chop on the water but comfy temp amd minimal breeze.

 

Loves me some Mahi Mahi!

 

I didn't ride my bike today....

Instead, I finally went fishing, first time in 2023, and that is embarrassing to admit.

I'd been shopping around for a spot to jump on a sportboat for the past few weeks, but I'm always watching the reports online everywhere on a daily basis so that I have an idea of where the action is lively.

Where local fishing (along the coast) is concerned, I adore barracuda action on the jigs more than anything and that's been happening lately so I've been watching it closely. As an added bonus this year, an enormous body of San Bass has moved into the same region, something we haven't seen in years. Those are also fun to catch, too so I jumped on the Enterprise, a 3/4 day boat out of Pierpoint Landing in LB.

First, let me get my disapprovals out of the way. All three sport boats at that landing are in a bad way. All are rusted, paint chipped, cracked, and in need of a body restoration haul out. I was shocked to see that. I wonder if the boat owners are in financial trouble due to the recent covid restrictions era. Hell, the Enterprise has two large heads and one of them doesn't even have a freakin' toilet seat on the toilet!!! Not a good way to represent a landing, IMO. That said, the crew and service was great and the Enterprise is a huge, wide body vessel that fishes comfortably.

I assumed that the Sand Bass were out on Huntington Flats, where they always have been when they come in shallow to spawn. Wrong, not these fish. These fish were on or near the Eastern Horseshoe kelp/105 spot. And there was in fact thousands of them there but they were finicky. We parked in about 60-70 feet of water and picked away at them for a few hours then we pulled the anchor and set offshore a little ways to 150' over the rocks to load up on Sculpin, and those things were suicidal. I caught at least 15 in the hour we spent over them. It was one stop shopping. After that we moved back to the first area since those fish were biting better mid day and it was a little better but not great. We stuck with it for a while a picked away. Then the fleet split up and some boats went to the bull kelp area of the Horseshoe Kelp. We moved over there as well and the Calico Bass fishing was pretty fun. I caught several shorts and a few keepers. At all of the bass spots we fished, there was barracuda moving in and out of our chum line but they too were picky. I caught a few shorts and a few small Calico bass on the iron and near the end of the day, while bait fishing for calicos, I caught what would be the biggest barracuda, and fish of the day, on the boat.

The weather was nice, but balmy. Seas were gentle, breeze was 5 knots all day.

I only took one fish pic all day, of a very pretty small sculpin.

 

17.25" Spottie the other night on foot patrol.

 

Thats a beast!