3rd time is a charm and a new AO

3rd attemp this season at hooping paid off. Decided to stay away from Oceanside this time around and headed south to San Diego bay. Launched out of Shelter Island @ 1930 with 7 nets baited and ready to drop. After helping a few guys with red and red chem-lights (because their nav lights wasn't working) we were Oscar Mike. Knowing that high tide will be around 2030 we deiceded to drop our 1st string deeper then usual, between 35'-45' (Oceanside harbor is very shallow). 1st pulled produced 2 barley short bugs and 5 huge rock crabs and 1 spider crab. We moved nets 1-5 around 6-7 because that's where we caught those shorts thinking the roaches will be around that area. 2nd pull produced 5 more quality rock crabs, 2 more spider crabs and 3 more shorts. 1st way short 2nd was barley, and 3rd way tooooo close to risk. 3rd set we decided to move in closer to "structures" and let it soak a bit longer for adult beverage break and ***** shooting. That string came up empty! Made a quick move closer to the point in 20'-22' of water for a crap ton of small swimmer crabs just picking away at our bait and star fish. We moved south of Zuniga jetty for much of the same. About now it's past 0100 and a light fog started to roll in and we moved to the spot where we caught all the shorts and nice rock crabs. We let the nets soak a bit to try for some bass or what ever would bite. My buddy caught a nice Sculpin and after about 15 mins of trying to lip the SOB to give him a hair cut we moved up and pull our string of nets. This set produced more barley legal and 2 legals and of course more rock crabs. Last and final set, we got 2 more legal and a huge spider crab that's my buddy decided to keep and give a try. We had to leave because boat was running out of gas. I believe had we had stay longer we could've pulled up more legals and more crabs. We marked the spot and mozzy on back to the launch ramp.

All in all this has been the best night so far and the most we've caught since opening night on this boat. Weather was perfect, not to cold and barley any wind. Water was like a lake the whole night and not as dirty as Oceanside (red tide).

We ended the night with:
15 crabs
4 legal roaches
1 monster spider crab
1 big scully

between 4 guys.