Plan A was to catch macks and drift for Butt or drop for ling.... No real Plan B.
Early morning start.
Weather called for short period swell and possible windy conditions so we stayed close to home. Bait was EVERYWHERE!!! Except they were only sardines and could only manage two on the sabiki. No real fish marks at all, just sardines all over.
We tried our usual bass spot, but it was dry and fish were hard to come by. Later I heard the Dolphin has been raping that spot for 2 weeks so our favorite spot has now been decimated until it can recoup from that onslaught.
We tried multiple spots with plastics, but only got short bites, so I would switch up to a 2oz jig while Steve went with a 3-way to look for triggers. At this point it was pretty much wide open on small to medium rockfish.
Lots of Browns, albeit not very big.
Tons of Gopher Rockfish.... I mean I only took a few pics of them but it was almost always a Gopher. (A few Johnny Bass also came up)
The only thing that was more numerous than the Gophers was the Treefish! Holy crap, when you were reeling up, you had a better than 75% chance it would be a Treefish or Gopher. We let all the treefish go but one as the females were all spitting eggs.
Of all the rockfish, the Trees were all twice the size of the typical brown and gophers.
The bait stealers were out in force and finally hooked one of them. Such pretty fish though.
We made another move looking for kelp and bass. We found both, but only manages smedium sized turd rollers. All were dark with bright orange cheeks, so I'm guessing they were in breeding colors. These guys were taking the plastics finally.
The wind started to kick up and the sun burnt through, but the bass bite was pretty slow in general. Once again, all Turds.
Made a final move and just started throwing plastics, irons, jigs, droppers, and whatever we had. Of course a Rattlesnake made a showing.
I think Steve caught 5 or 6 sheepshead (all released)
We passed my buddy Randy a few times bounce balling for halibut, but no luck for him this day.
Got a few more turds...
...Before finally getting our first Calico of the day! Holy crap! Where did they all go???
I finally get a good bite and it's fighting all the way up. I was pretty sure it was a decent sheepshead or even calico, but a big old poor-mans yellowtail made a showing!
We must have gotten 50 or 60 fish today with 3/4 of them being on the small side, but had steady action and there were some quality ones in the mix. We decided to just drift a bit instead of Spot-Lock and were getting plucked like crazy! I finally got one of the bastards and realized what was stealing all of our baits....
Damn Rock Wrasse.... Swarms of them on the bottom as per the sonar.
Well, that was it. A good numbers and species count day, but nothing to write home about. Until next time!
