My buddy was crushing big yellowfin and bluefin tuna this past weekend on his boat, but wouldn't give up his location. I had too much going on anyways, but did a quick half-day trip on Saturday to check out the local scene.
It was beautiful out when I left my house, but turned into pea soup fog down at the water. I launched and was navigating by my plotter/gps. I was wanting to head to La Jolla, but couldn't see in front of me and didn't want to run over one of the millions of lobster pots.
I started throwing the small megabait and started picking up some bass. All calico, and all about 12" long. I think I caught a dozen of them before I moved up another mile up the line.
I tossed the megabait out again and bam! It was a nice bonito!
I ended up with 3 and dumped two others. The bonito were occasionally blowing up around me, but not super aggressive on the artificial. It was starting to clear up a bit and I decided to run up to LaJolla. I should have been checking my plotter as I was running since I ran into a super thick kelp forest and pretty much got stuck. I kept trying to get out, but the alarms on my motor were going off every time. Finally, I saw my chance and took the inside route and had to make a long loop around to get back to the outside.
The south wind started to pick up and surprisingly still didn't blow off the fog bank. I found a shallow water rock pile... more like a single big rock and worked the motor the entire time to stay over it. I cut a few squid strips and put it on the megabait. There were clouds of fish down there. I caught a bunch of assorted rockfish and nice sized Whitefish! I didn't take a whole lot of pics of the fish as I was having a hard time combating the wind with the motor so I didn't lose such a great rock!
I also caught a half a dozen of the smallest sheepshead I've seen! The smallest was about 7" and the biggest was right at the 12" mark
I kept my limit of bottom critters and all on the megabait to boot! I lost a few to sea lions and tossed a few really small ones back, but decided to troll on the way home since I wanted to harvest my daily quota.
I wasn't getting anything and wanted to stay away from the crowd, so I ran shallow to throw the big plastic. I wanted a halibut and scored one! It was only 17 inches or so. I got one more bass and started to troll the shallow water with a deep diving rapala just to see if I could score on a hunch.
Unfortunately I didn't, but still had a great morning of fishing. I love eating whitefish, so was pretty stoked to get a good amount of nice sized ones especially in such shallow water!
Well, that was my day. Fun one indeed, even though it was not the huge yellowfin and bluefin my buddy was catching. Mine were far from being huge, but a few of the whitefish were in the upper 3# range or bigger.
Thanks for reading and until next tide!
