New trolling motor was installed and time to test it out. Wind was supposed to be strong and the King tides were gnarly. With almost a 9' swing of water, that inlet was going to be nasty, so I gave Squatch the choice: Bay, Trout, or Local inshore. He wanted the local inshore so we gave it a shot.
Wind was pretty brisk from the start and the air was quite chilly. Water was cold and dirty, and the drift was like 5mph between the wind and the current. The good thing, the trolling motor worked great and kept us on the structure. Bad thing was all of the critters were hiding in sheltered areas to not have to battle the current. Apparently, the afternoon tide/bite is good, but the morning rager was quite crappy for everyone who was fishing out there.
It was slow fishing. Some spots had fish (not many) where others were completely barren.
I started off with a nice size shark mackerel. Steve follows it up with what he thought was a nicer mackerel, but turned out to be the prefect shark sized bait Bonito!
the wind tapered down a bit and the top of the tide allowed us to do some catching.
Mostly Browns
Lots of Bumble Bees! All nice ones also!
I got the lone two bass... A nice legal calico and a small turd roller.
Steve was master of the Gopher Rockfish, while I kept swatting the bees.
Steve gets the lone Rattler of the day and a nice one to boot!
We kept grinding from place to place catching a variety of other critters before calling it quits. We were hoping for a Trigger, but I managed the lone Sheepshead.
More shark bait... Pretty Blue Perch as they go with a green hue.
We threw most of them back, but I kept enough for a few tasty dinners
That was it. Back at the ramp at 12:30 and time to get home to clean fish and the boat. The trolling motor had a successful sea trial, so I'm ready to really start harassing the bigger fishes again.
Thanks for reading.
