ml8fish
06-13-2014, 10:25 AM
With all the reports of WSB and YT being caught locally, I was really excited to try to go get some. The plan was to head down Weds night, meet at my buddy's 36' Bayliner in Newport and get an early start at the huntington flats the next day. I get off work at 10pm, get my stuff together, drop my dogs at my parents house and head down to the marina with my girlfriend, arriving around midnight, along the way I get bad news, my friend (and captain of the boat) is not gonna make it.
Bummed that were not going out anywhere, I made the best of it anyway and settled for what I figured would at least be a nice day on the water at the slip and try to pull on some rays and bass, the next morning yielded a few stingrays, the wind started to blow pretty hard, so much for catching anything. Went to Irvine Ranch Market for some awesome sandwiches, got some ice just in case :Wink: and returned to the slip with the wind getting stronger, with all the duffy boats going back and forth so close to the docks, the method of fishing is restricted to simply dropping a bait a couple feet off the back and hoping if a hook up happens that the fish doesn't wrap it off the nearby pylons, or worse that some duffy renter ends up getting way too close and snagging the line in their prop -I've had plenty of days where we caught more duffys than fish haha :LOL:. had a couple beers and watched sail boats tack up the channel racing each other.
I had a package of ancient looking squid that was packed who knows when, the tide turned at 3pm and was scheduled to come in really high, the wind kinda had my hopes down, but I tried tossing a BH swimmy for nothing anyway and sabiki'ed up some smelt. Switched out the stinky squid for some live smelt and as the afternoon got long the wind finally relented a little bit. As the wind started to ease off the fish started biting, there was a few chunky spotties and a YFC, several rays and some snapped lines. It was around 6:30 with the incoming tide rising high and in full swing that I get hammered and feel nice headshakes, it makes a run under the boat toward the pylon, I crank down on the drag and muscle it back up, a few moments later a nice flattie is in the net, after years of fishing in this spot, I have caught plenty of halibut but they've always been shorts, I knew it was legal as soon as it came to color and the battle was witnessed by a party on a large boat passing by, I held up the prize to cheers and high fived my GF, taped out to 26". Ended up being a great day after all!
44342
44341
44343
next week we will try to actually leave the slip and aim for the WSB, hopefully i get to post a PB report then :Twisted:
till next time
-Marcus,
~ML8fish
Bummed that were not going out anywhere, I made the best of it anyway and settled for what I figured would at least be a nice day on the water at the slip and try to pull on some rays and bass, the next morning yielded a few stingrays, the wind started to blow pretty hard, so much for catching anything. Went to Irvine Ranch Market for some awesome sandwiches, got some ice just in case :Wink: and returned to the slip with the wind getting stronger, with all the duffy boats going back and forth so close to the docks, the method of fishing is restricted to simply dropping a bait a couple feet off the back and hoping if a hook up happens that the fish doesn't wrap it off the nearby pylons, or worse that some duffy renter ends up getting way too close and snagging the line in their prop -I've had plenty of days where we caught more duffys than fish haha :LOL:. had a couple beers and watched sail boats tack up the channel racing each other.
I had a package of ancient looking squid that was packed who knows when, the tide turned at 3pm and was scheduled to come in really high, the wind kinda had my hopes down, but I tried tossing a BH swimmy for nothing anyway and sabiki'ed up some smelt. Switched out the stinky squid for some live smelt and as the afternoon got long the wind finally relented a little bit. As the wind started to ease off the fish started biting, there was a few chunky spotties and a YFC, several rays and some snapped lines. It was around 6:30 with the incoming tide rising high and in full swing that I get hammered and feel nice headshakes, it makes a run under the boat toward the pylon, I crank down on the drag and muscle it back up, a few moments later a nice flattie is in the net, after years of fishing in this spot, I have caught plenty of halibut but they've always been shorts, I knew it was legal as soon as it came to color and the battle was witnessed by a party on a large boat passing by, I held up the prize to cheers and high fived my GF, taped out to 26". Ended up being a great day after all!
44342
44341
44343
next week we will try to actually leave the slip and aim for the WSB, hopefully i get to post a PB report then :Twisted:
till next time
-Marcus,
~ML8fish