Brought Jared in on the bite tonight. 1700-2000. 5-8mph wind in the face, 1-3' swell. More kelp in the water though. And tons of by-the-wind sailors. And like a dozen dead sea birds! Normally whatever about dead birds but there's obviously something going on so it was sad and concerning.
Early on I hooked a big piece of kelp with the KM and couldn't grab it in the wash. Finally got a hold of it after a couple minutes, the KM popped out, and I felt a weird pain in my finger. Turns out I somehow got kelp lodged under my fingernail...and at the same time my favorite pliers fell off my belt into the wash, never to be seen again.
Switched to a c-rig because Jared piled up 3 in short order. I pulled 20 yards off all my Red Label fluoro spools before this session, but didn't seem to help. First bite, set the hook on a presumed croaker and...whole rig gone. WTF! Immediately threw a tantrum. Jared had some Shimano fluoro to share so I put some of his 12# on for another c-rig. 5 minutes later I hooked up to something I couldn't turn for a minute, and was very glad I had a different source of leader for it. Played it all the way in, narrowly avoiding a big kelp patty, and slid up a donkey of a croaker. New PB at 17.5". Never thought I would break my old 17" record from when I was 12, but here it is!
Worth the trouble of the day.
Proceeded to snap off that leader somewhere along the braid 5 minutes later. Fish Gods Giveth, Fish Gods Taketh Away. In the last year of surf fishing I don't think I had ANY line failures of any kind from any section, and now I'm up to at least 7 failures from 3 different batches of line in the last 3 days. It’s not the guides/rod/reel since most of the breaks are within a foot of the leader knots. Might just buy the shimano fluoro for employee price and move on. Seems good enough quality.
I decided to tie the next KM straight to braid, and do as much standing and talking as walking and fishing. Jared ended the night with 5 croaker and 4 perch, plus a fouled bat ray, to my one croaker. But if I'm only gonna get one...
