I haven't taken a sick day in over a year since I used up all of my sick time for my surgery last year. It is time....
Beautiful morning!
I was planning to look for halibut as the winds and swell looked to be best this day. With the bait pump working, I also decided to buy sardines for the first time for my boat in probably 5 years as I'm usually trying to make mackerel instead.
I bought a half scoop of beautiful sardine and had $25 out as the last time I used to always buy bait, a half scoop was only $15... Eeek, $35 for a half scoop now....
Heading out and I noticed the boat was getting sluggish, but the bait pump was running just fine. I opened up the new hatch to see the bilge area and it is overflowing with water! What the hell! So much so that the water was starting to come inside the boat! Literally, the boat was sinking and I must have pumped out 100 gallons of water the next hour by hand and by bilge pump. As I investigated, I realized there is a leak somewhere at my bait pump, so it is pumping half the flow into the boat and the other half into the well. When the pump is off, there is nothing coming in, so I'm fine.
After that, I decided to use the trolling motor and power drift along the reef edge looking for some tasty butts. I had a couple of huge hits, but the small live bait hook didn't stick. I finally got one... then two... then three legal lingcod. Biggest was 25 inches, smallest was 23 inches. I also lost three more reeling them up, but was quite proficient in knowing how they were fighting to be sure. They were fat and must have known the season is closed, so off they went.
I was going to get some underwater shots, but it just took too much time and I wasn't prepped at the moment.
There were other boats driving by, so my pictures were less than stellar as I didn't want company fishing with me.
I did catch some small mackerel that I threw into the tank and kept trying them to see if they preferred the macks or the sardines.
I moved around the reef edges a bit and a little while later was having my sardines just decimated! Some were cleanly sliced like a shark bit them, and some looked like they were picked to death. Trying to get the hook in these things mouths were almost impossible!
I pinned on a small mack and dropped it down. It got slammed and this time I got the sucker! I wasn't sure what it was as it gave up a pretty good fight! WTH!?!?!?
First sheepshead on a live mack! That mack was TORN UP!
The wind started to really pick up from the south and the water got much worse than I liked. I decided to try the Nel Tower which was closer to home, but there were two boats already on it playing with bass, so I just ran in the bay. I figured I would hit some of my halibut spots since I had the sardine, but couldn't get a sniff. Instead I started to flyline sardines around structure and holy crap, how much fun!
The first one fought so hard and drug so much line, that I thought I had Phong's Pargo he caught in MB all those years ago. Instead it was a 17" spotty! 2.4# on the boga grip and the biggest spotty I've caught in quite a few years. Probably falls within my top 10 of all time, for sure!
I was wondering where all of the big bay bass have gone the last few years since everything seemed to be 12" or smaller. I used to get quite a few nice ones, but I thought it was just getting fished out. Maybe it only took some live bait to turn them on since they've been caught so many times over the years, but they loved the live bait!
I got a dozen and a half bass with all of them between 13-17 inches! I can't remember the last time I had so many quality fish in a quick session.
I found the two areas that had the most fish and I'll keep that to myself, but they were foaming when I tossed a few baits in as chum. It was so much more fun than I thought I would have with baitfishing spotties!
But that was it. I had a lot more missed fish and bites, but were from smaller fish that couldn't fit the dines in their mouth.
Now I have to find and fix my bait pump issue, but glad I found it on a trip close to home rather one so far away.
