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31

Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / A Lot Of Fish Reports In One

« on: September 10, 2022, 02:21:28 PM »

Have been doing a lot of fishing lately and a lot of fish have hit the sand so this is going to be a number of reports in one. All the details for fish added to the list will be on a reply below

7/3/22
Fished dropped baits, went 1 for 3 on biters. Buddy landed a white around 9.5ft

7/9/22
Sd county beach, fished casted baits on an outgoing tide. No salad or wind made for a nice night. One biter for my dad at 10pm but it spit the bait, ran very sevengill like. Nothing after

7/10/22
Fished dropped baits with some friends, 3 white sharks in total but i couldn't get bit to save my life. All smaller fish under 7ft

7/11/22
Fished dropped baits with one other friend. 4 for 4 on white sharks, got 2 each. My 2 were 8ft and 8.5ft and my buddies were 7.5ft and almost 9ft

Night of 7/15 - morning of 7/17
Fished a beach on catalina island for a couple days dropped baits and casted. First biter is a big leopard on a huge bonito head and 24/0 circle hook. Next biter was a pretty big black seabass for me on a dropped bait in the early morning. Midday produces another seabass on a dropped bait for my friend and then i hooked another seabass on a casted bait but the hook pulled when the fish was less than 10 yards from us. Last fish was another seabass on my friends casted rod.

7/17
Got back home from catalina and another friend called saying he wanted to fish so i packed up my stuff and headed to the beach to fish dropped baits. Finally got something other than protected species and had a soupfin and 2 sevens hit the sand. I had a short bite from both species and 1 or 2 other fish were hooked and lost as well. Soupfin bites came on incoming tide and sevengills bit as it shifted to outgoing. Won't bother adding these to the list since they are not my fish

7/23
Fished solo, couldn't buy a bite

7/30
Dropped baits, buddy caught 2 goddamn bat rays and another buddy caught a leopard. Pretty embarrassing night

8/4
Casted baits at a fairly popular SD county beach with a friend, biters were non stop but couldn't get most of them to stick. My friend gets bit 10 minutes in to our first soak, short bite. Next bait does the same thing. Next biter is on my rod, fish pulled pretty hard and felt very soupfin like but it charged the beach and the hook pulled at some point after. I get short bit on my next bait. My buddy gets 2 more short bites before he finally sticks one and it's a nice leopard shark. No bites after that. All between 9pm and 2am, end of outgoing through the middle of incoming

8/5
Back to the same beach with my dad to fish casted. My dad gets 2 short bites instantly but they seemed like leopards. On his 3rd cast he gets a screaming run as he is putting his rod in the rod holder. Fish spit the bait and the cable came back tore up as well as the bait. Most likely a soupfin, nothing after that. All on outgoing tide

8/11
Made bait at oceanside pier and then headed back down to the same beach for the 3rd time in a row. My friend gets 2 short bites instantly and then we pack up and head to a beach barely south. No biters until about 5am when my friend gets a slow run that ended up wrapping in his pulley rig and biting through 100lb mono shock leader

8/13
Fished solo way up in north LA county. Get a screaming run on my first soak and it's the right kind. After a couple good runs against a lot of drag i beach a big fat soupfin. Luckily a bystander got some good photos and i released it. On my next 3 or 4 baits they all got short bit within minutes of casting. Switch to a rig with a j hook stinger and i stick a nice 5ft leopard within 20 seconds of casting. Left right after because reel took a bath in the sand, left them on a wide open bite

8/14
Went to another SD beach with a friend to fish casted baits, i caught my smallest ever soupfin at 5.5ft on my first soak and later into the night i caught another nice leopard. All my buddy could catch were thornbacks.

8/21
Went back down to SD again with a friend this time to cast baits. Got another bigger grade soupfin on my 3rd soak. Nothing other than that

8/29
Fished solo, caught kelp and moved up the beach. Caught a thornback and went home

32

Contest & Events / Re: 2022 Summer Rod Give-A-Way Contest... Voted by Your Peers!

« on: July 08, 2022, 03:37:17 PM »

Time to catch another double digit fish and hire a professional photographer.

33

Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Re: Protected Species Report 6/18

« on: June 27, 2022, 05:19:09 PM »

Wow, Nicely done!  It wasn't too long ago that only a handful of GW's were even known about or around. Just reading about people having 5 hook up nights... I can't believe how much the fishery has changed!

Congrats boss and thanks for the write up, really good read!

Thank you! And there a LOT of whites around now and have been for the last few years. Very common bycatch on dropped baits. They'll bite when fishing a floated bait for thresher, and bottom baits of any size or at any distance for soupfin or sevengill. I'm surprised we don't see more on the casted baits.

Also forgot to mention that I went back two nights later with another friend and got wrecked by a massive kelp stringer and awful current for the short time we were there. Not fun

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Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Protected Species Report 6/18

« on: June 27, 2022, 04:32:27 PM »

Since things have been slow around here I thought I'd post about something different than the typical soupfin and sevengills. Fished with one of my buddies that has a drone last weekend and had a pretty productive night but only with the tax man.

We got to the beach around sunset and setup while we waited for the crowds to thin out. By nine we had flown all our baits out and conditions were actually surprisingly good. Only 1 rod was getting affected by current and none of us caught any grass.

Just after 10pm my rod goes off screaming with the first biter of the night. The entire fight was me straight winding this fish to the beach until it was in the surf and we see why, it's a baby tax man. The thing wasn't even 6ft and it was on a 50w with 130lb braid so no fight at all. Kept it in the water and got it released, no pictures taken of this one.

About an hour later at around 11, my friends rod takes off with the next biter. This was a bigger fish and on lighter tackle so it was a longer fight. Once we got it in skinny water we saw it was another tax man at right around 8ft. Same process as the previous fish, kept it in the water and no photos but I got a release video of it

Sometime around midnight my friend gets another biter but the hook pulled shortly after he started fighting it. The cable wasn't chafed and the bait had no teeth marks on it so our guess is black sea bass.

Around 1am he gets another screamer and this was definitely a serious fish. He fought this one for close to half an hour before the fish started running north and his braid got cut off on something. Would have been cool to see this one because it would have been a really nice fish

Right as my friends gets done winding in from the cut off, his other rod gets bit but it drops the bait and as that one spits the bait, my rod gets slammed and then goes slack. I pick it up and wind as fast as i can to get tight with it and when I do, the fish makes a huge run against really tight drag and starts dragging towards the water. Thankfully my friend and my dad both grabbed me and helped me sit down to fight it since we had no harness. This fish took a really long first run against some serious drag so after that I knew this was going to be a double digit fish. Fought this one for a good 30+ or so minutes on the heavy tackle before we got it into skinny water. We couldn't believe the girth of this fish when we all first saw it. One of the fattest fish I've seen. Length on this one was somewhere around 10.5ft. Got some pictures of the release but they didn't come out very good at all.

Packed it up right after we released that one around 2 am. Probably left them biting but I had work the next morning and had already worked an 8 hour shift and went straight to the beach to fish. Total for the night was 5 fish hooked and 3 landed. First one under 6ft, next one about 8ft and the last one about 10.5ft. All on short drops too, 150 or so yards from shore. Surprised my dad didn't get bit but he has had a decent streak of luck so he can take a break.

But hopefully I'll have some more soupfins or maybe even a sevengill to post for you guys soon since you have all retired from fishing.

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Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Re: Found them

« on: June 23, 2022, 04:20:45 PM »

Way to go on a big summertime sevengill! Showing the old farts how it's done

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Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Re: Soup Was Served On 6/11

« on: June 16, 2022, 10:00:47 AM »

Thanks guys, glad to get another one on the sand. Biters have been hard to come by but my buddy just got a couple soupfin in sd on drone dropped baits so they were past casting distance. And i emailed you a picture verne

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Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Soup Was Served On 6/11

« on: June 15, 2022, 03:25:48 PM »

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

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Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Re: What a morning!!!

« on: June 10, 2022, 03:22:18 PM »

That's awesome, haven't had a day like that in a while

39

Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Re: Checkers from the pier

« on: June 08, 2022, 09:40:48 PM »

Nice ones, love catching the big calicos

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Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Re: Of Rainbows and Unicorns: A Grail Quest

« on: May 30, 2022, 04:47:05 PM »

Daaang I got a shout out! Glad my driving aimlessly in circles while pulling a bait paid off for someone. 

Awesome fish and massive accomplishment. Some people look at it as just a blue shark and maybe think it’s worthless or nothing to brag about, which may be true when off shore and fishing pelagics, but Spencer has been after this fish for at least the 4 years I’ve known him and it’s such a massive accomplishment from the shore. The stars really have to align and you have to
Be there at the right time and know exactly how to place that bait for something like this to work.

Congrats Spencer! Just a couple weeks and it’ll be time to look for that big socal mako.

I doubt anyone would think it's nothing to brag about, the fact that mutiple pricklys, makos and a hammer all happened well before this should speak volumes for how unlikely the odds are for an lbsf blue shark and how much of an accomplishment it is to land one. Great job spencer!

41

Fishing Talk / Re: Do any of you farmers fish anymore

« on: May 29, 2022, 12:01:37 PM »

I still get a kick out of this post... for a few reasons.   

Hahah and why is that

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Salt Water Shore Fishing Reports / Re: Of Rainbows and Unicorns: A Grail Quest

« on: May 29, 2022, 12:00:33 PM »

About time somebody caught one. You should use it for bait

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Fishing Talk / Do any of you farmers fish anymore

« on: May 26, 2022, 07:27:40 PM »

Has anyone shark fished lately? If so, how have conditions been for you? Haven't been down to the surf in SD since early april when i caught a soupfin but I've been hitting an OC spot, it's still producing fish, just not when I'm there haha and if someone else gets bit when I'm there, they farm it. Although lately it's mostly been on dropped baits. Conditions are getting bad though, kelp is back in the surf and current is still bad. Haven't hit LA county in a while but plan to go soon, current there earlier this year was nothing compared to what SD has had all year

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Tackle Talk / Re: SoCal specific shark rod

« on: May 15, 2022, 05:59:41 PM »

https://www.hifishgear.com/collections/ulua-rods/products/okuma-hawaiian-custom-ulua-rod

I fish an hxw raptor with one of these that i had completely rewrapped. Deckhand wrapped with paracord from right at the top of the 12in steel butt all the way to the top thread where the dark blue stops and the light blue starts. Put an extra guide right above that and get the rest of the guides replaced with either alps hxn or fuji hb guides and it ends up looking like a giant 13ft jigstick. Put my hxw raptor right above the steel butt so I only have 12in under the reel and cast south african style with the reel down in my left hand and the grip of the rod up in my right hand, it allows you to get a better grip on the spool when casting huge baits and also allows more of the rod to flex during the cast.  It's a beast of a surf rod and I'm able to fish straight 100lb hollowcore braid to 30ft of 100-135lb mono shock leader and fish my drag at a little over 30lbs. It casts a 10-12oz spider weight with another 9-10+ ounces of bait with no problem, casts typically measure between 70-90 yards with a bait. Might be a bit overkill.

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Saltwater Boat Fishing Reports / Re: Mean Fish... (5/14)

« on: May 15, 2022, 05:45:39 PM »

Hell yeah that's better than we did on an overnight on the t-bird from Thursday-Friday. I was the only one on the trip to get a bluefin to bite and it bit me off within 5 seconds.