Squatch and I hit the high seas at daybreak with a Plan A turning into Plan B in mind.
Plan A, skip the tuna circus rush offshore and head straight to LJ looking for Bonito, Yellows or big bass. Oh, and hopefully score some mackerel for surf shark bait. The damn bait freezer by me sells one big mack or two tiny macks for $3.75 which is an outrage when I'll go through about 5 big macks on a normal night.
Got to LJ... and lifeless. No birds... No bait... No signs of life...
I was casting a small iron looking for macks, but wound up with a bass.
We decided that this wasn't happening. I gave Steve a few options (Offshore trolling or run up the coast looking for life). He wanted to run up the coast looking for life so we started hitting the shallow water scene off NC SD.
TP was filthy with floating salad, but had tons of bait. Unfortunately, only dolphins were pushing the bait and there wasn't a single gamefish to meter. We moved up the line a few time more and stopped at what used to be a kelp bed, but now is just a pile of shallow water rocks. Steve and I switched up to more finesse baits since we kept getting hits, but missing them.
Turns out we had a pretty steady pick of Calico with a big Sandy thrown in by Squatch. I though I was hit by a halibut, but realize it probaby was just some grumpy bass down at the bottom.
We chased some bait schools for nada and before we realized it, it was almost noon. We ran back before any wind picked up and as we were getting closer to LJ, I saw a bird school offshore. MACKS! and TONS of THEM!
I had my sabiki, but instead we slung small irons for almost 100 nice macks! About 1/2 were awesome surf shark baits and the other half were great night-time catfish baits! We made money on this trip!
Afterwards, we literally set up in the thick kelp looking around. Steve's finesse game was good, but his kelp game was not so good. I picked up 3 decent calico with one kicker on the 6" MC.
My boat was acting a little funny, so we got out of the kelp and ran to some hard bottom spots to see what we could do. We spot locked a spot and started catching bass, rockfish, sculpin etc. The south current was ripping, so I put on a heavier chovie iron and got me a Senorita! I'm not sure what he was thinking.
Well, that's about it. Great weather and decent fishing. Too many options right about now, but the radio chatter with all of the Paddy guys stealing paddies from people and Googans running over each others trollers made me glad we stayed inshore and started to get the feel of the local inshore scene.
Thanks for reading, now it's time to get back in the surf looking for grinners!
