Jackpot Jimmy
12-23-2012, 04:20 PM
With the two-month rockfish hiatus fast approaching, it was about time to start loading up on some freezer meat. So I hopped on the ¾ day boat Spitfire out of Marina Del Rey for some fun-filled codding action in the Santa Monica Bay. We had 25 anglers on board this cold morning and we had live squid for bait. Captain Jeremy Maltz welcomed us aboard and outlined his game plan, which was to fish the Malibu area to see if we could get some reds to bite, and see what to do from there. Meanwhile, Mike had the grill going down in the galley, John went around and took up the jackpot, and Derek stripped up squid in preparation for the day of codding.
So, we took off north to Malibu to see if the reds wanted to bite. Unfortunately the morning held mostly grouper on the outside, but there were a few nice reds that came up. I stubbornly fished the Jax Jig, which usually is a killer on the reds. I missed a few bites on the first drift, and then after that I just got a half-banded rockfish and a sanddab the size of a potato chip. After catching that sanddab, I stopped fishing the jig and went to my lingcod rig. I immediately caught a short lingcod, after which the ‘dab was good for one more use, and I pitifully caught a small rosy rockfish. Oh, well.
The outside stuff had slowed down so we headed inside to see if some whitefish or goats or something like that wanted to bite. Apparently, the fish were full, and nobody got a single bite. So we headed back down the beach to try the deeper stuff one more time. Well, this was the ticket. By this time I had gone to the double dropper loop, and I immediately was tied into a double on the cookie-cutter sized reds. We caught a nice haul of reds on this drift, pushing our reds count up past 100. But the bocaccio took over on the second drift so our reds count didn’t rise too much but we ended up with about half-limits of reds. The final count was 125 reds and 75 rockfish (mostly bocaccio), 1 lingcod, and 2 sheephead. Jeremy tried his best getting us on the fish today. If you stuck with the double dropper loop and squid strips, you ended up with a decent bag of filets - I just like seeing if I can catch them on the jig. Today, it couldn't compete with squid, but I made up for it there at the end. In any case, I had a good day on the water fishing with some good anglers.
John with a Big Red, caught on one of the first drifts of the day.
http://imageshack.us/a/img4/5259/img0042uo.jpg
Same Red that John was holding was caught by this angler – fish was about 7 pounds.
http://imageshack.us/a/img90/9929/img0045fz.jpg
Ray with a couple average size reds.
http://imageshack.us/a/img834/352/img0047sv.jpg
John with the Jackpot Red
http://imageshack.us/a/img842/5821/img0044xj.jpg
My Haul
http://imageshack.us/a/img59/5942/img0048ci.jpg
So, we took off north to Malibu to see if the reds wanted to bite. Unfortunately the morning held mostly grouper on the outside, but there were a few nice reds that came up. I stubbornly fished the Jax Jig, which usually is a killer on the reds. I missed a few bites on the first drift, and then after that I just got a half-banded rockfish and a sanddab the size of a potato chip. After catching that sanddab, I stopped fishing the jig and went to my lingcod rig. I immediately caught a short lingcod, after which the ‘dab was good for one more use, and I pitifully caught a small rosy rockfish. Oh, well.
The outside stuff had slowed down so we headed inside to see if some whitefish or goats or something like that wanted to bite. Apparently, the fish were full, and nobody got a single bite. So we headed back down the beach to try the deeper stuff one more time. Well, this was the ticket. By this time I had gone to the double dropper loop, and I immediately was tied into a double on the cookie-cutter sized reds. We caught a nice haul of reds on this drift, pushing our reds count up past 100. But the bocaccio took over on the second drift so our reds count didn’t rise too much but we ended up with about half-limits of reds. The final count was 125 reds and 75 rockfish (mostly bocaccio), 1 lingcod, and 2 sheephead. Jeremy tried his best getting us on the fish today. If you stuck with the double dropper loop and squid strips, you ended up with a decent bag of filets - I just like seeing if I can catch them on the jig. Today, it couldn't compete with squid, but I made up for it there at the end. In any case, I had a good day on the water fishing with some good anglers.
John with a Big Red, caught on one of the first drifts of the day.
http://imageshack.us/a/img4/5259/img0042uo.jpg
Same Red that John was holding was caught by this angler – fish was about 7 pounds.
http://imageshack.us/a/img90/9929/img0045fz.jpg
Ray with a couple average size reds.
http://imageshack.us/a/img834/352/img0047sv.jpg
John with the Jackpot Red
http://imageshack.us/a/img842/5821/img0044xj.jpg
My Haul
http://imageshack.us/a/img59/5942/img0048ci.jpg