Decided to make the drive north with my dad to northern LA county in search of some soupfin since the thought of going down to SD has been scaring me because of salad. Haven't fished this area too much, usually if I go this far north I'll go just a little further to Ventura county or even up to Santa Barbara for sevengills in the winter. Conditions seemed pretty good when we got there other than some salad in the water, but we ended up catching none of it throughout the entire night. Surf was tiny and for the first time in months I didn't have to deal with strong current.
I got my bait in the water just after the peak high tide and I see my dad is having to answer the same questions we all get asked anytime someone sees a person fishing. He finally is able to get set up and put a bait in the water as the tide starts to go out. We sit down for maybe 10 minutes before his bait gets hammered and his clicker starts screaming.
He picks up his rod and winds into it but it never really fought much and it took not even a couple minutes to get into the surf so I was thinking leopard shark. Once I went to grab it I saw those bright yellow eyes and long grey body so it being a leopard shark went out the window thankfully. Didn't fight much for my dad but this was definitely the craziest soupfin I've handled, imagine a soupfin flopping around the way a mackerel does on the deck of a pier. I got the hook out and took a couple pictures and released it. I never measure fish with a tape, the most I do is a wingspan across it's body so this one was an estimated 69 inch.
We sat the rest of the night without hearing a single click on either of our rods. Bait pickers were pretty scarce too. I was just glad the conditions were really good for once and not frustrating like they have been.
6/11/22, Soupfin, *69", Female, Mackerel, Surf 1-2ft, Outgoing tide, Waxing gibbous, LA county
