9/3/17
Bigminnowfisher was in town over the weekend, and it didn't take much arm twisting for him to convince me to go out to the Coronado Islands on Sunday. We rented a private boat similar to how we've done past trips, picked up a scoop of sardines at the bait barge in Mission Bay, and headed south. We had our passports, CA fishing licenses, MX fishing licenses, and FMM "visa".
Staying ahead of one of the sport boats.
Coronados in the distance.
We didn't see any kelp patties on the drive down. However, near the south island we saw some bird activity, and there were a few boats around, so we freelined sardines and cast spoons to see what was biting. Eli got the first fish, a bonito, but a sea lion chewed up its back half on the way in. We set it aside to use as cut bait. I had a hit and a miss on my sardine with 25 lb line, but then I hooked up on a kroc spoon that I had let flutter down on 10 lb line. I don't know how I got it in without a sea lion tagging it. It's definitely a PR!
Pretty soon we had a swarm of sea lions circling like sharks. They were biting off the bodies of our sardines, so our chances of hooking up with more fish on the surface pretty much dropped to zero. Before we moved we dropped to the bottom with squid and caught some ocean whitefish. A few of them were big enough to keep. I'm really looking forward to seeing how they taste.
We decided to abandon the islands and head north a bit to fish for rockfish instead. We stopped when we came to a dropoff about 300 ft deep. I switched to a 2 hook rig (8/0 circle on the bottom, 4/0 circle on the top) and a 12 oz torpedo sinker. I used cut bonito as bait, and Eli used squid - both worked equally well. My first catch was a honeycomb rockfish.
When we drifted back over the flat the bite abruptly changed from rockfish to these guys.
Back over the canyon we started picking up more rockfish species. I believe this is a greenspotted. It's tough telling a few similar species apart that have these dark green markings on their back. There doesn't seem to be a clear line between what's a spot, a blotch, or a freckle.
Greenstriped is an easy one to ID.
This little one is a swordspine. The long 2nd anal fin ray is what gives it away.
Each time we moved spots we went a little deeper. At 500 ft we started getting into these sunset rockfish, which look the same as vermilions but live in deeper water over rocks. Eli was excited to get this one as a new species.
Eli was using smaller hooks and pulling up a few different species. When he pulled up several halfbanded rockfish on a drop, I quickly tied on a rig with smaller hooks so I could get one as well. After that it was back to the big hooks!
At the time we called anything with dark green markings on its back a greenspotted, but now looking through the photos it's clear that some of them are different. This one might be a greenblotched. I might have a freckled somewhere in the photo album as well. In the interest of catching more fish I didn't photograph everything I caught. Hopefully that didn't cause me to miss out on a lifer, but if it did, oh well.
It takes a while to let your rig drop to the bottom in 500+ ft of water. I was using a 20 oz torpedo sinker at this point. Later in the afternoon I switched to 28 oz. We caught fish at around 750 ft and also tried at around 1100-1200 ft, but we didn't get any hits that deep.
It was getting late in the afternoon, and we still had a bait tank full of sardines, so we started putting them on our hooks and dropping them down. I'm not sure why we didn't do that earlier, because it was a blast! My sardine got slammed, and I knew I was reeling up something a bit larger. Lingcod! It was between 7 and 8 lbs on the gripper scale.
The sardines worked great for larger model greenspotted/greenblotched rockfish. However, my last notable catch for the day was a really exciting one. This is a Mexican rockfish! I don't think anyone in the species fishing community has this on on their lifelist.
Shortly after that we headed back to the USA with our limit of fish. Plenty of rockfish for fish tacos as well as a few whitefish, sanddabs, and the ling.
What a trip.
