I didn't ride my bike today....
Instead, I
finally went fishing, first time in 2023, and that is embarrassing to admit.
I'd been shopping around for a spot to jump on a sportboat for the past few weeks, but I'm always watching the reports online everywhere on a daily basis so that I have an idea of where the action is lively.
Where local fishing (along the coast) is concerned, I adore barracuda action on the jigs more than anything and that's been happening lately so I've been watching it closely. As an added bonus this year, an enormous body of San Bass has moved into the same region, something we haven't seen in years. Those are also fun to catch, too so I jumped on the Enterprise, a 3/4 day boat out of Pierpoint Landing in LB.
First, let me get my disapprovals out of the way. All three sport boats at that landing are in a bad way. All are rusted, paint chipped, cracked, and in need of a body restoration haul out. I was shocked to see that. I wonder if the boat owners are in financial trouble due to the recent covid restrictions era. Hell, the Enterprise has two large heads and one of them doesn't even have a freakin' toilet seat on the toilet!!! Not a good way to represent a landing, IMO. That said, the crew and service was great and the Enterprise is a huge, wide body vessel that fishes comfortably.
I assumed that the Sand Bass were out on Huntington Flats, where they always have been when they come in shallow to spawn. Wrong, not these fish. These fish were on or near the Eastern Horseshoe kelp/105 spot. And there was in fact thousands of them there but they were finicky. We parked in about 60-70 feet of water and picked away at them for a few hours then we pulled the anchor and set offshore a little ways to 150' over the rocks to load up on Sculpin, and those things were suicidal. I caught at least 15 in the hour we spent over them. It was one stop shopping. After that we moved back to the first area since those fish were biting better mid day and it was a little better but not great. We stuck with it for a while a picked away. Then the fleet split up and some boats went to the bull kelp area of the Horseshoe Kelp. We moved over there as well and the Calico Bass fishing was pretty fun. I caught several shorts and a few keepers. At all of the bass spots we fished, there was barracuda moving in and out of our chum line but they too were picky. I caught a few shorts and a few small Calico bass on the iron and near the end of the day, while bait fishing for calicos, I caught what would be the biggest barracuda, and fish of the day, on the boat.
The weather was nice, but balmy. Seas were gentle, breeze was 5 knots all day.
I only took one fish pic all day, of a very pretty small sculpin.