Messages

31

Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Re: How to Catch Trophy Perch, Vol. 1

« on: November 14, 2019, 08:33:14 AM »

Today we are going over revolutionary techniques to achieving greatness in the surf perch fisherman's community.

Everything starts with the rig! I like an Avet MXJ filled with 60# braid with 25 feet of 80# Ande mono topshot. We apply the reel to something with length and backbone, such as a Penn Carnage ii 12' XH rod, capable of casting up to 12oz and handling 30-80# braid.

On the end of the line, we have a 10/0 octopus hook with a 3' section of 135# nylon coated 7 strand wire attached. We don't want that once-in-a-lifetime toad perch to chew through, now do we?

We use a 3 way swivel on the opposite end of the wire, then attach a 7oz sputnik sinker to a length of 80# mono similar to that of the wire on the other side of the swivel.



Now it's time to head to your favorite spot! Preferably somewhere in Ventura County, because you can't catch big perch elsewhere. Sorry San Diegans! Stay classy!

Do you have some fresh mackerel handy? Good! Cut the bugger in half. Big baits = big perch!

Cast your line past the breakers. Now, watch and wait patiently. The strike is sudden and the quick reaction is your gateway to success!

There it is, set the hook!

Keep the line tight. Reel, reel!

Use the waves to beach him!

You got 'em!



Congratulations! Remember to release your trophy to support the positive characteristics of this fish in the gene pool!

Unfortunately, you may run into grubby, time wasting rays and sharks whilst on the hunt for those Trophy Perch.



End result for the night:

1 BSP
1 Thornback
2 Sevengills (52", 55")

Based on a true story,
Jeremy

Congrats!

32

Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Re: Better Late Than Never (11/12)

« on: November 14, 2019, 08:26:52 AM »

Tuesday Nights... you know the deal.  Work.... Bar.....  Beach....

I love it getting dark early and we had a lot more fishing time in today and less time at the bar.

Nice incoming tide.... Little Surge or current.... Little bit of grass but very manageable.

I was first to get a bite, but it felt very shovelnose or ray like.  It popped off half way in, but I had my suspicions.  A few casts later, suspicion confirmed...
Big Shovelnose.  Pretty cool to see some larger units as they have pretty much gone missing down here the last few years.



Squatch then gets the right kind of hit!  Big bendy bait grab and no doubt a nice Sevengill!  He fights it all the way to the breakers and either the waves rolled it or the hook was just caught behind a tooth and never got a good enough bite into its face... but it got free and went bye-bye.  Ugh....

A little while later and Steve was to get some redemption.  His rod gets a different type of hit, but definitely the right kind of shark!  As he's battling it in, we see it's a Soupie.  I had a bitch of a time wrestling it up on the beach as it was green and ornery.  I ran over to wipe my hands dry on the rag while getting the tape measure and pliers when I see my rod doing the dance and I'm on!  Definitely shark, but nowhere near the size of what Squatch caught.  My first "non-keychain" leopard in quite a while!  Got the double picture.



A very decent number of bites and not many in the way of bass or lobster.  Seems like the typical players were all out to play today.  Everything was swimming with everything today!

Then my rod loads up and line starts peeling.  I immediately thought Soupie.  A really good fight and I was expecting to see a medium sized soupie roll up in the surf, but instead it was a big old bat snot!  That's another thing I haven't caught in the surf in a while!  Pretty depressing since I was hoping for a shark, but it was a good warm up.



We checked the clocks and it was later than we thought so we packed it in as the bites also seemed to slow with the dropping tide. 
We saw a bunch of emergency crews ripping bye and wasn't sure what that was all about, but when i got home saw it was the Condos in Solana Beach that were on fire.  My folks stay at the ones right next to that when they visit every now and then.  Terrible fire, but pretty good night of fishing.

I have some updates to the shark list to do.  Verne: Soupie.  Jeremy: (2) 7-gill.  Squatch: Soupie
Maybe there will be more later this week?

Nice, Congrats!

33

Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Re: Back on the Horse 9/17/19

« on: September 18, 2019, 11:35:21 AM »

Not sure how to do this anymore, but I'm going to see if I can fake it.

 My younger son's birthday fell on Tuesday but he knows the drill. Even texted me written permission to fish and wished me good luck.

 Tom and I were biding our time with a few drinks and a couple tacos as usual, and hit the beach just after sunset when the parking starts to open up.

 Things looked pretty good salad wise, but it was a trick. We drug a bunch of crap up on the beach for a couple hours until things cleared up. Surf was manageable, but I could hardly sit down after a cast before I was loaded with weeds.

 I took a break and watched Tom reel up crap for a while. It put him in a great mood for the guy to set up ten feet from him and cast over his line. Even from behind and in the dark I could see his face. A face I recognize as unhappy.

 Finally, after a short break I decided to try the waters again. Actually got a decent soak time. I watched from my chair as my rod started to bend, but this time it just kept going and line started peeling off. Hell yeah, fish on.

 Felt weird. Pulling hard and swimming back and forth, but without the usual signs that would tell me what I had on the line. I decided it might be a smallish BSB.

 Turned out to be a nice 74" soupie with 20 feet of kelp on its face. 



 Threw a few more baits each for nothing. Tom said he lost a nice lobster in the surfline. I didn't see it, but it wouldn't be the first one to do that. Too bad you can't get them where we were or I'd be hooping it next month.

 It was nice to get back in the game. Hope its the beginning of a good fall season.

Congrats!

34

Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Re: caught my first diamond stingray

« on: September 04, 2019, 02:31:16 PM »

One of my species fishing friends was in town over the weekend, and he had a few targets that I could help with - horn shark, longjaw mudsucker, and chameleon goby.  Friday night we fished a spot in MB where horn sharks are caught, and sure enough he got one on his first cast.  I got my hopes up that I'd catch one as well, but it didn't end up happening. However, the last bite of the evening was this 17 lb diamond stingray, which was a fantastic consolation prize.



Here's a few other pics from the night. I'm sure you can reverse engineer the spot if you're so inclined.











On Saturday we skunked out at the chameleon goby spot off Shelter Island, but the longjaw mudsucker spot delivered. My buddy caught his first, and I caught the biggest one I've seen.



We also saw a lot of juvenile rays at this spot - round, butterfly, and diamond.  They were comically easy to catch by putting a piece of shrimp in their feeding path and waiting about 15 seconds.  I caught one small diamond and then left the rest alone. 



Here's our combined species list from the two days:

• spotted sand bass
• barred sand bass
• horn shark
• gray smoothhound
• shovelnose guitarfish
• thornback
• round stingray
• butterfly ray
• bat ray
• diamond stingray
• bay blenny
• largemouth blenny
• opaleye
• longjaw mudsucker
• California killifish

Sweet! congrats, on that diamond stingray!

35

General Board / Re: Shark Week vs Sharkfest

« on: August 25, 2019, 03:14:33 PM »

Nice hat

  Thanks

 

36

Freshwater Shore Fishing Reports / Re: Cats 6/12

« on: August 25, 2019, 03:11:20 PM »

After these last 3 consecutive hot days it was time to go.
The water warmed quite a bit and my fingers told me it was 70°.

Tossed out some fresh mack chunks on 2 rods.
Rods sat quiet for an hour and was about to switch spots.
Put on a fresh chunk and casted further down the bank.
10 min later i got picked up.
After a fun little battle this one hits the grass.



She could have gone another inch but kept flopping and pushed her head passed the tape.



I moved to another spot hoping it would be a little more consistent.

Spot 2 wasnt any different , rods sat quiet for another hour and got soaked by the sprinklers.
It was almost time to go when i got picked up again.
This one felt a little better.
Got her to color and did the solo net job.

Since i had strugled with the 1st fish to get a halfway decent pic with my crappy phone i used the camera. My laptop took a crap so i need to use someone elses computer to get the pics off the sd card. For whatever reason i did use my phone for the scale shot.





Ill have the original pic up later this week.
At this time i guess you cant call it official.

On another note, im not too happy that i cant get a full pic of the fish on the scale. Im gona see if i can see if i can hang it from a tree.

Im debating about going back out tonight.

Sweet! Catfish! You da ma!

37

Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Re: Lunch break Fishing Carpinteria 20190816

« on: August 25, 2019, 03:05:46 PM »

I love that reel! Congrats, on that Leo!

38

General Board / Re: Bundles of pot floating near Cat island

« on: August 16, 2019, 08:20:42 AM »

Found one on the beach in Carlsbad once.

  You're joking, right?

39

General Board / Re: Shark Week vs Sharkfest

« on: August 13, 2019, 11:22:03 AM »

Nice hat

Thanks!

40

General Board / Re: Shark Week vs Sharkfest

« on: August 12, 2019, 07:06:36 PM »

Cool Cap indeed!

Thanks!

41

General Board / Re: Shark Week vs Sharkfest

« on: August 12, 2019, 07:06:04 PM »

Well, my sister-in-law works for the Discovery Channel.  I'm a Shark Week fan. Plus, she gave me this cool cap:

Very cool indeed, looking forward to seeing you wear it on the beach   

Vern, I've already broken it in at the Bridge!

42

General Board / Re: Shark Week vs Sharkfest

« on: August 12, 2019, 07:05:19 PM »

That’s a good hat all right.

Thanks!

43

General Board / Re: Shark Week vs Sharkfest

« on: August 08, 2019, 03:49:01 PM »

So, there is always the head to head battle between the two networks.  Here are the lineups...

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/sharkfest/

and

https://ew.com/tv/shark-week-2019-schedule-all-programs/

Well, my sister-in-law works for the Discovery Channel.  I'm a Shark Week fan. Plus, she gave me this cool cap:

44

Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Re: Summertime Blues (19JUL2019)

« on: July 24, 2019, 10:02:35 AM »

Hit the sand with Binh hoping to find some straggling soups feeding on the grunnies. With it officially being summer, we weren't expecting mush. We both managed to beat the skunk, me with a leo and Binh with a shovel. Nothing too exciting, but it was nice to get a some drag pulled and leave the beach landing something.
Water was pretty warm. Kelp was an issue early on, but really cleaned up as the tide rose. Lots of people and little parking. Mack was the bait of choice.

   

TNGC, but were is Andre? hahaha

45

Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Re: I don't think there's any soup puns left

« on: July 04, 2019, 02:01:07 PM »

I haven't posted on here in awhile but I figured I should update my fellow shark fishermen on some of my recent outings. For most of the spring I was  too distracted by spiny swimbait eating fishes to spend as much time going after the sharks, but recently I've been hitting the sand again for bigger game. The shark fishing was on fire last week. Lots of soupfins around. I wasn't expecting much pulling up to the beach during the early summer but 15 minutes after casting my reel started screaming and it was full speed from there. Over the course of three nights I went 9 for 12 on grinners! My best week yet. I've had a few multiple shark nights before but never for this many days at a time. A couple of confused bat rays showed as well. All of the fish were caught on light line surf species such as croaker, perch, and Corbina; I'd show up to the beach either the morning before or a few hours before sunset to make bait. This last weekend brought in a nasty swell and a lot of kelp to most of the SD beaches but hopefully things'll clear up again soon.

Night 1: fish caught on Yellowfin Croaker + Corbina (gratuitous 18.5'' Corbina pic from that morning; I did not cut that one up for bait)
https://photos.app.goo.gl/4se8TmS9yrSgzhZB6

Night 2: all fish caught on Corbina
https://photos.app.goo.gl/p82o7tpPPnkkmSZo7

Night 3: all fish caught on Corbina
https://photos.app.goo.gl/z6c6HhJzkbs9CDXd6

Night 4: Skunk

Highlight of the week was the shark I caught at sunset on night 3 (the 26th). I tried multiple times to tail her in the wash but she kept spinning out of my grip. 5 or 6 tries later and I was essentially wrestling the animal in the suds while a small crowd gathered to watch. All of a sudden it rubbed through the 100lb leader and I grabbed/tackled it right as it was about to rocket away and give me the biggest embarrassment of my shark fishing career. While dragging it up the beach it tried to bite me and grazed my ankle with its teeth. It's always been kind of on my bucket list to get bitten and although it was only a graze it at least makes for a good story.

Sweet report Kam. Congrats, on a good season! Hopefully, we'll get a chance to meet and fish together next season.

Thanks Andre, I’m definitely down to fish with you. This season might not be over yet haha I’m gonna do some more scouting once the surf cleans up.