Last week's weather kept me off the water. Also repair parts for the C-tug cart hadn't arrived yet.
This week's out of town Halloween party and time change effected my start time. Out the door at DAWN. No hangover at least. Prepping my kayak streetside and run into transducer connection issues. Fiddled with that for awhile. Somehow had the FF show a diagnostics screen and make noises I've never heard before. Slapped it upside the head after some voodoo with the pins and that did the trick. On the sand and thru the 1ft breakers late enough to put on my Costas.
Shoot over to the pier. Not much bait, or at least sizeable bait. There's was a small school of chovie sized macks with a few mini sized mixed in but were hard to get going. Made only a handful before heading over to the AO.
Smooth easy paddle, light chilly beeeze from the west in areas. Puff of cool air from the east in others. Water temp down to 62° but very clear. Clean skies could see all the way to Dana Point. Chopped salad everywhere. Crowds have dwindled. No cattle boat in sight.
Zero surface action not even a bonito blitz all morning. First 2 greenbacks lost to snags from floating kelp. Had a new jig that I rerigged with homemade assist hooks to try out. Landed a sculpin before losing it to a lobster trap. I was even a good distance away from the bouy when I snagged it's rope. Way too much rope and scope on that one. All other traps had near vertical lines.
Paddled around more saving the last 3 macks to drop down on meter marks. Saw a few here and there but were most likely loose kelp floating around. Ran over a rock that was lit up and boom, easy limit of whitefish
. Left that area and beelined it to the kelp line to see if anyone was home.
More floating kelp than actual growing kelp. Not much on the meter other than an occasional bait ball swimming by. Threw the iron for a lone bonito, biggest one of the year. Never did see any signs of bonito nor hooked another one. No bass to be seen. Dropped a mack and got smashed by most likely a dink. I slabbed the now crippled mack only to find more whitefish. As I released one it stayed right in the shadow of my kayak. I spanked it with my paddle to get it going. It went right back into hiding. Another moment later a sea lion swam in and slurped it up within arms reach. Well that might of explained it. Cool to see up close but afterwards couldn't shake this sea lion until I paddled over to the closest skiff to pass it along. Dirty trick but fair game in the sport of fishing. Continued working the edge of the kelp for basically a Nadapalooza.
Big slow down in terms of action and little signs of life. At least the waters I was working anyway. Huge fog bank rolled in around noon. Super thick too couldn't see 100 yards at times. So much for that view of Dana Point. Decided I had enough, deployed the compass, and headed east to The Shores. Missed it by 200 yards LOL. Paddled parallel for a bit before landing thru the sea of lost kayak tours and leopard shark snorkel people.
Packed up and left. As I was going up the hill I see the beautiful view of La Jolla Cove. WTF?! Zero signs of fog clear skies to the horizon. At this point I'm still hearing the ringing in my ears from a PB blowing their horn at some idiot in their 1M yacht racing around blind 45 minutes earlier.
Shoyu, sugar, ginger, garlic, chili pepper water. Going to hone in on my smoked pua this week. Maybe try a mac salad. Oh and crack open an Oktoberfest beer I forgot I had in the back of the fridge.
