Alright, my vacation is coming to end, so I'll summarize how I did at the piers. I made three short trips to Oceanside, and one trip to Shelter Island. Overall I did not do very well at Oceanside, for a variety of reasons, but I'm very satisfied with what I learned, and I look forward to my next visit when it's a bit warmer!
12/22/2015 - Oceanside Pier
Ruoxi and I were in the area, so we stopped by to check out the pier even though we did not have bait. The bait shop on the pier was closed. It was mid-morning, the tide was low with a current moving north to south, and it was extremely windy. Very few people on the pier, almost no one else was fishing. I threw a krocodile on a fish finder rig with a 7' ML rod, spinning reel, and 6 lb fluoro from about 3/4 of the way to the end of the pier. I've never used a lure with a fish finder rig, but I felt it was necessary to keep my lure down with how strong the wind was. Caught a few clumps of seaweed and then got a nice hit by this barracuda. I assume this is an unusual catch for December? I've failed to catch greater barracuda in Florida twice, so I was quite pleased to get this one out of the way on my first CA pier fishing excursion!
12/25/2015 - Oceanside Pier
Time of day, tide, current, and wind conditions were pretty much the same as above. I know that rising and high tide are better for fishing and being out on the pier when it's not so windy makes for more enjoyable fishing, but I worked with the time that I had. This time I was armed with squid left over from bat ray fishing. I set up the 6 lb line with a dropper loop and #6 baitholder J-hook above a 1 oz pyramid sinker, and a rod with 10 lb mono with a fish finder rig and #2 octopus circle hook. Fished about 1/2 way out to the end. Both rigs caught one yellowfin croaker, and there were no other bites. Still very few other fishermen.
12/27/2015 - Oceanside Pier
This time I checked the tide charts and set my alarm so I could get to the pier early. Ruoxi decided to sleep in, so I was on my own. The tide was starting to rise when I showed up. I set up at the very end of the pier. I put out a chunk of squid on a fish finder rig similar to the one above, but it was with 20 lb braid and a 17 lb fluoro leader. The hook might have been bigger, probably a #1 octopus circle. It didn't get touched all day, and I swapped the bait out about every half hour. With my other rod I fished a sabiki with pretty small hooks, sometimes straight down close to the pilings, and sometimes I underhand cast out as far as I could and played around with different retrieves. On a slow retrieve, with the weight of the sabiki possibly scraping bottom, I got some taps and reeled in five chub mackerels. Two flopped off, and I landed the other three. I swapped out the squid on the fish finder rig with fresh cut mackerel, but it still didn't get any bites. No other bites, and I left in early afternoon. There were more anglers this time, but I only saw a few people catch chub mackerel and one smelt.
12/29/2015 - Shelter Island
Ruoxi and I drove downtown with the plan to fish until we got hungry and then eat dinner somewhere before heading home. We arrived at the pier an hour before sundown as the tide was moving out pretty strongly. I tied two dropper loops in the 10 lb mono with #1 octopus circle hooks and a 3 oz pyramid sinker on the bottom and tossed it out as far as I could. It got hit pretty quickly, and both Ruoxi and I landed some nice barred sand bass. I put out a fish finder rig as well, but it never got touched. While we waited, I rigged up my micro rod with a #14 hook and a piece of squid tentacle. I dropped it as close to the pilings as I could and usually got taps right away. I got a mix of juvenile sand bass, juvenile kelp bass, and one super tiny scorpionfish. Once it got completely dark the bite died off abruptly. Not sure if it was the light or the tide that was the cause. Probably the tide. It's too bad that we didn't stick around for the tide to come back in, because I think the bite would have picked back up. Nonetheless, it was a good fishing trip, and I'll never complain when I can add two more species to my lifelist. (Kelp bass is the only species from this vacation that I've caught previously.)
And that's it! It's hard to say if I could have done better - I probably could have with fresher squid, different baits (crabs, shrimp, mussels, bloodworms, etc), different rigs (more high-low dropper loops instead of fish finder rigs), smaller hooks (are #2 and #1 circle hooks too big?), or better timing in terms of sunrise/sunset, tides, wind, etc. Lots of variables to sort through. I'm in no rush though, I know it takes a long time and a lot of good and bad days both in order to learn the patterns and become better. I probably learned a lot by fishing through some especially cold December days as my first intro to SoCal pier fishing. I'm definitely looking forward to spring and summer when I come out again!
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