0630 launch. Wanted to focus on deep dropping for blackgills and maybe also look for lingcod. Halfway to the grounds, the wind picked up and was not looking good for fishing deep...same as last time! Almost just pulled off to some spots in 100' but decided to at least try for lings in 300'.
By the time I got out there I said eh why not, first drop I tried 500'. Was getting pecked, wasn't sure what was going on. Brought it up and of course, got one big dab on and both whole squids are gone. Forget that.
Moved to 300', stuck a thawed dink chilipepper on a big circle and a little hook with chunk squid beneath to maybe at least get something fresher than this chili. Brought up a decent paisan on the squid. Hm.
Switched to flukes and squid and racked in some fish real quick, mostly tapas grade...
Lasso'd a fresh chili and put it to work.
Lings were nowhere to be found. Small/medium rockfish were wide open but I persisted with several long drifts with the chili para nada.
Finally decided I had way more than enough paisan meat in the boat and at home, so retreated to shallower water. Dropped into my whitefish hole and found one instantly, and it came up along side a mackerel! Haven't seen one in a second. Sent it down immediately.
Reset the drift, then got bit on the mac! Halfway up it came unbuttoned. Pretty sure it was a bass but got my heart going with a big bait finally getting eaten. Rigged up a sabiki trying to locate another mac but had a hard time for a minute. Then a quick flurry on the FF put 9 in the boat, plus a sardine. A little chaos on deck. Put another one down and not long after the clicker started going. Heart pumping, need to see this one, even if it's just a bass.
And up from the depths came a new PB grump! 20.5", no scale but was surprisingly heavy. I wanna say 6lbs but I'll play nice and call it 5 and change.
Outside my 15-20" slot limit, popped her and let her go.
Kept soaking mackerel but only got one more light bite.
Headed in shallower to try a slow troll, but regretted it. Wind was up, trolling the mackerel was not good with them being dead/dying, and I lost my clean angle back to the harbor. Soaking wet bumpy miserable ride back to the harbor.
9 species today! Unfortunately no blackgills or lings, but if I weren't soaking bigger baits this time, I'm confident I could have had my 20 fish limit between rockfish, whitefish and sand bass before noon. But I am trying to focus on low-confidence targets now that I have enough white meat for at least a few weeks.
4 paisan
3 whitefish
2 chilis
1 red
1 speck
1 square bear
1 sand bass
1 dab
10 mackerel
1 sardine
Ambassadors from each species.
