I needed to get out and clear my head. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to give my shoulder a test and take the boat out to the ocean and see how it all goes. I did ask Steve to meet at my place instead of the Ramp in case I needed any help with the boat. The last thing I want to do is mess up my shoulder again.
We saw my buddy Randy at the ramp who was gearing up to go Bounce Ballin' for Halibut. (Later on I heard he did pretty good with 3 legals to 16#.)
The conditions were perfect! We made the run up to La Jolla and started looking around. We made a few moves as we didn't see any signs of life, but I haven't been out fishing in my boat since it broke down in November. I needed to at least see things so I could get back in the groove with the local fish scene.
Since we didn't find much in the way of macks, we opted to just artificial fish today. We did keep any macks that somehow made it on the boat in case we ran across some hungry yellows, but spent much of the time casting swimbaits and throwing irons. My only thing I told Steve was that we weren't rockfishing as the monotonous reeling from depth might be a little too much for my shoulder and just wanted to see what other fish were showing themselves.
I had pretty consistent action all day, but nothing wide open by any means.
Some were pretty chunky and good to take home, but this was a CPR sort of day.
Nothing was huge, but decent. For whatever reason, Squatch had a bunch of rust to knock off him. He had a fairly slow day and kept switching rigs that perfectly mimicked the small bait we were seeing. The closest thing to wide open was I had 4 cast with 4 decent bites, but only two made it over the rail.
WSB #1....
WSB #2
It was pretty cool to get a flurry of WSB's like that only I wish they were about a foot bigger. hahaha
Steve got in on the action that got him on the board with a colorful Checker!
I then hooked a big mackerel. As I was reeling in it got slammed, but let go. Then we see a 5+ pound Calico in hot pursuit of a 1.5 pound Mackerel! He saw the boat and split, not to be seen again.
We tried an area that I was hoping for a shallow water lingcod, but only got small bass and Micro Flea-Cod.
This one friggand inhaled the metal! I put a gulp sand worm on the end to see if it would work, but it worked a little too good for the micro varieties.
I didn't think they could get any smaller, but I was wrong.
We quickly made a move again and I got a few Brown's as well as a few bass that were not even close to picture worthy. This pic was just to show some variety for the post.
Steve gets a really good bite and it rocks him! We know it was a good bite, but now the fish and his new jig are stuck in the rocks! After playing with it for a bit, the fish finally swims out and Steve fights it in. Looks like he speared it on a wild jigging motion.
The goat went back to grow up to fight another day.
The bass kept coming. I forgot my top secret lures, so I was only using my secret lures. I put on my best "Curmudgeon Face" for this one. lol
A good mix of Sandies and Calico today.
Steve redeemed himself with a beautiful and Dark Calico to round out his day.
I finally put out one of the mackerel and it gets bit. I was hoping for a halibut, but only turned out to be a turd roller whose eyes are bigger than his stomach.
We started the count down as the wind started to pick up and I got my last bass to end the day. A fat chunky one!
It was close to 1 pm and we made the run to the ramp without incident. Man it felt great to get out again and hopefully this year turns out to be a banner year for everyone on this site.
Thanks for reading guys and until next tide!
