It's been since June that I fished inshore.
Steve caught a bad bug, so I made the solo trip to try and get my therapy in. Beautiful morning and it was nice not having to show up at any particular time, but I had to call it by noon no matter what.
Water was quite cold and the wind was already out first thing. 3' @7seconds wasn't bad, but with the winds, it was a little bit spoty.
I caught a mix of bass, rockfish, whitefish, and assorted oobly gooblies. I was only keeping the ones that weren't going to make the return trip.
I had 2+ dozen fish through the morning but stopped at 9 in case I got a big one.
i was dropping the small iron and bucktail which caught most of the fish, but I dropped a big 4oz bucktail with a whole squid pinned on. I should have tied it up to a bigger rod, but I stuck with the bass gear.
Of course, it got inhaled, and felt like a nice lingcod. I got it off the reef by about 15 feet, when it went ripping down and found something to wrap on or hole to go in. I tried opening the bail, but it kept bouncing and was not getting loose. I tried for a bit with no luck and the line eventually snapped. Losing a $12 bucktail was the hardest part of the whole thing.
I had a few nice fish on which really seemed to be sheepshead, but they dogged me also. That's what I get for using the smaller gear to have a little more fun. Oh well.
I felt a little tap and was sure I hooked it, but felt nothing. I reeled in to what I thought was a kelpfish at first and realized that I had a painted greenling (Oxylebius pictus) instead! Holy crap! I didn't think these things got anywhere near Southern Cal!
Well, I never got the big one to get my limit, but it was a fun shot at them and fun actually staying inshore. I actually ran to the deeper rockfish spots to look around, but only saw nothing... not even a pixel on the sonar.
As I was pulling the fish out of the water hold, I saw this nasty critter.
Nasty...
Anyway, my booty for the morning. The title to the post had to do with all the fish I missed. It's been a while since I bottom fished and used line for something other than pelagics.
Thanks for reading!