Wide Open Sand Bass fishing on the Half-day boat Point Loma!

After fishing a tough lake Irvine for just a fish here or there. I went somewhere where everybody caught a nice bag of fish! (Sand Bass) Yea, I know not the most glamorous fish in the ocean or even the best tasting. (But this trip was all about nostalgia!) I'm going to be 60 years old next month and I realized I've got more years behind me then in front of me! So looking back on my life now is kinda nostalgic! I really haven't changed a whole lot since I was about 14 years old! But Boy did the fishing change "A LOT!!!!" Some for the better, a lot for the worst! The better fishing in the ocean now is for the Yellowtail, YFT and the BFT. The worst is all the rest! I'll name a bunch just to show you what I mean. We now catch pebble cod instead of big Rock Cod like I did in my youth. Halibut in places like Santa Monica bay are just a memory now. We use to catch the 3 B's on the Half-day boats all the time. (Bass, Barracuda and Bonito) No such thing as an Half-day Bonito or Barracuda anymore. They do catch a bunch of short Calico Bass, where 95% of all of them have to be thrown back. Then their was the famous spawning Sand Bass! They use to catch full boat limits of 10 fish per angler for weeks in the summer time. We are talking they would pack the boats with 60-70 anglers at a time and catch 700 Sand Bass per trip! But alas not any more! We use to have 5 different Sand Bass spawning area's. One up in Ventura, Santa Monica Bay, Huntington Flats, Oceanside and Imperial Beach. One by one they all vanished and now we have none or do we??????

I read fish counts in the ocean like a preacher study's the Bible. I noticed a couple of weeks ago the Point Loma afternoon/twilight trip started catching Sand Bass. Not just an handful but full 5 fish limits for all passengers! Just like the old day's but with a 5 fish limit and only 36 passenger maximum load. But none of the other San Diego Half-day boats were catching hardly any Sand Bass. Hmm I thought and came up with the reason why! They have a very strange schedule for their afternoon run. (3:00 pm to 8:30 pm) So I reasoned their biting in a small window of time, when the other boats aren't there! I had to go check it out for myself! Just for curiosity and for nostalgia reasons. I would ride the OCTD to catch the Half-day boat that left from Seal Beach all through my youth before I could drive. (it cost a whopping 25 cents each way back then in the 1970's) Just to catch Sand Bass on the Half-day boat. Even on my High School grad night, I went fishing instead in the morning to catch some Sand Bass, instead of hanging out with my friends, where ever they went instead! (I still think I made the better choice!) Lol

Sand Bass aren't the biggest critters in the world, so to make it more sporting I sized down my tackle. 12 pound test on my Curado reel and my Calico Jack rod which is pretty light weight! I also wanted to catch them on the Rubber! I mean plastic, back then we called them all Rubbers! The latest and greatest plastic Sand Bass lure is the WHAM! re named Blam and then Re named again Jam! I saw one of my local tackle stores had a whole container of them in the best color! (Green) So I bought some with an 3/4 ounce red head lead head. (plus a pack of squid to give it some more flavor) I was all set! Yes I did bring a back up pole for bait! My Luna reel on my swim bait rod and a true dropper loop set up! I was hoping I wouldn't need it! (I didn't) Oh by the way, they really don't know what happened to the Sand Bass. Some thought the giant squid ate them all up! Or just plain over fishing did them in! They did catch millions of them over the years, just when they were spawning. So on this trip, no Sand Bass were going to die by my hands! I was going to C&R all of them! Unfortunately I was the only one on the boat who did that! But that's a personal choice for everyone to make themselves!

On to the fishing.

The captain said, they don't start biting till 6:00 pm so we are going to check out some other area's for fish first. I wondered if that was true or not? He was the only boat for 3 weeks to catch these things. So maybe he's protecting his spot from the other boats! He won't go in there, till he knows they are all in the harbor going home for the day! The head deck hand say's he remembers me from somewhere, so he has loose lips in talking to me! He say's it's just one spot and when we get in there, it's so wide open they will bite bare hooks. He said the night before, they limited the whole boat out in 30 minutes! (so he's got something to protect) Their literally wasn't 1 boat around us the whole day. (not even a skiff) So this is flying totally under the Radar! We are down at Imperial Beach and it has a big pier like Huntington Beach does. So when we are stopping earlier to fish, I'm looking at where we are in relation to the pier. We are all over the map! North of it, South of it, West of it, you name it, we were there. Almost like he is trying to confuse people if someone is watching him! Then at 6:00 PM he heads for the spot, we weren't even close to it for the last 2 hours.

The head deck hand tells me, the captain has a full "FIRE BALL" of Sand Bass on the fish graph! (it's going to go crazy any second now and it did!) Every bait and every lure thrown by everyone is getting bite on nice 2 1/2 to 3 pound Sand Bass! Some were even a little bigger and no shorts! Everyone of these things are in Full spawn mode biting everything in sight! Man this is fun on my little rod, even if they don't bite it on the sink, they will bite it reeling in! I am keeping track on the number I catch because this won't take very long! Everyone is bit on every cast! I don't think I ever remember it ever being that, "stupid wide open" on all of my previous 45 years of fishing these things! The big question is, how many can you catch before the captain say's, "it's all over we are done!" It took a little bit less then an hour before the captain said, reel them in boy's and girls we are going home! So how many do you think I can catch in an hour? It is kinda deep, so it takes a little while for your rubber to sink and I had 1 break my line like a Barracuda use to, so I had to re tie once! The correct answer was 22 Sand Bass, that is what I can catch in a little bit less then an hour of fishing these things biting wide open!

That's my story and thanks for reading it!

Thanks for the great read and report. Your trip sounded like you had a good time and a bunch of tight line, good for you.
Bill

Cool read thanks etucker,I remember some bites like that on the flats too,but that was years ago,we would drift some areas with the bass staying under my skiff for hours and they would eat the plastic completely off the lead head and then still eat the sinking bare lead head! Lots of fun.

Cya Tuna Vic

etucker1959.. Great story! Thanks for sharing. Yeah, I am a bit older than you, but I can remember going out on private boats with my dad back in the early 1960s. We caught big Barracudas, lots of Bonitos, tons of Sand Bass, and a few big Hailbut and the occasional White Sea Bass. This was all in the Horseshoe Kelp and Huntington Flats areas. My dad also took me and my friends out several times onto the Huntington Beach barge that was anchored out a mile or two. There was an hourly shuttle boat from the end of the pier to take you out or back in. Fishing was pretty good, but the cheeseburgers were the best! Newport pier also had a fishing barge anchored out off shore, I think. Or maybe it was a half day boat that picked you up off the end of the pier. My memory isn't what it used to be. I remember when I was about 14 my best friend and I got to go out to fish from the Newport barge or boat, and for whatever reason, there were large Sablefish everywhere out there! We had so much fun catching these fish with live anchovies on just about every drop. The deckhands called these fish "sea trout". These northern fish are a cold water, deepwater fish. Why they were off Newport in the summer was very unusual. But we had so many fish in our gunny sacks, that we could hardly lift them! My dad loved to cook, so he prepared these fish in a way that had people asking for more. I don't think I've heard of SoCal fishermen catching any of these Sablefish (or "Black Cod" as they are called up north) through the years since then.

I have never lived near the ocean, and get seasick on boats, so I have never had much experience with offshore saltwater fishing. Some of these stories sure make me wish that I had. I have ocean fished from shore and piers a fair amount though, and I agree that fishing for most species has deteriorated, sadly, perhaps due to both commercial and sportfishing, and changing environmental conditions. Catching spawning Sand Bass would have to be rough on their ability to reproduce.

Black Cod are usually in the Chinese supermarkets, but I don't know where they are caught. I suppose they are caught in deep water from commercial boats farther north.

Robert.. I get really seasick too when I go out on big boats, no matter what I try. I was fine as a kid, even catching a 208 lb Striped Marlin off Cabo San Lucas in 1964! The last time I went out on a neighbor's 18 foot boat, around 1997 or so I was fine, but we only went out a short distance from the Longbeach breakwall. Plus fishing was really great, so I stayed busy.
We caught lots of bass, but getting your bait or lure down past the mackerel and Barracuda was hard to do! I gave up ocean fishing and fish almost entirely freshwater, except for the occasional fishing trips to Newport Bay. I don't even have any ocean outfits anymore. The Sablefish are caught commercially from Northern Calif., all the way up into Alaskan waters.

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Originally Posted by Natural Lefty

I have never lived near the ocean, and get seasick on boats, so I have never had much experience with offshore saltwater fishing. Some of these stories sure make me wish that I had. I have ocean fished from shore and piers a fair amount though, and I agree that fishing for most species has deteriorated, sadly, perhaps due to both commercial and sportfishing, and changing environmental conditions. Catching spawning Sand Bass would have to be rough on their ability to reproduce.

Black Cod are usually in the Chinese supermarkets, but I don't know where they are caught. I suppose they are caught in deep water from commercial boats farther north.

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The Sablefish is another fish I would catch in my Youth! We use to catch them down here in Deep water in the winter time! Same Half-day boat from Seal Beach, when I would ride the OCTD to get to the pier from where the boat left from back then. I thought catching Yellowtail and Albacore was the Bomb when I was growing up. But in reality, the critter fish we would catch on the Half-day boats are the ones I long for now! Lol

Half-day boat out of Seal Beach I think was the GW where my son worked on it as a PIN HEAD crew member. Between 1974 & 1976. Fun Times!

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Originally Posted by fishmounter

etucker1959.. Great story! Thanks for sharing. Yeah, I am a bit older than you, but I can remember going out on private boats with my dad back in the early 1960s. We caught big Barracudas, lots of Bonitos, tons of Sand Bass, and a few big Hailbut and the occasional White Sea Bass. This was all in the Horseshoe Kelp and Huntington Flats areas. My dad also took me and my friends out several times onto the Huntington Beach barge that was anchored out a mile or two. There was an hourly shuttle boat from the end of the pier to take you out or back in. Fishing was pretty good, but the cheeseburgers were the best! Newport pier also had a fishing barge anchored out off shore, I think. Or maybe it was a half day boat that picked you up off the end of the pier. My memory isn't what it used to be. I remember when I was about 14 my best friend and I got to go out to fish from the Newport barge or boat, and for whatever reason, there were large Sablefish everywhere out there! We had so much fun catching these fish with live anchovies on just about every drop. The deckhands called these fish "sea trout". These northern fish are a cold water, deepwater fish. Why they were off Newport in the summer was very unusual. But we had so many fish in our gunny sacks, that we could hardly lift them! My dad loved to cook, so he prepared these fish in a way that had people asking for more. I don't think I've heard of SoCal fishermen catching any of these Sablefish (or "Black Cod" as they are called up north) through the years since then.

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Your right about the Sablefish! I caught them too in the early 1970's in pretty good numbers, but I haven't seen them since!

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Originally Posted by Jig-Guy

Half-day boat out of Seal Beach I think was the GW where my son worked on it as a PIN HEAD crew member. Between 1974 & 1976. Fun Times!

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I was there then too, going on both boats out of Seal Beach sportfishing. The Half-day boat was the City of Seal Beach and the GW was their 3/4 day boat at that time period! Those were the exact years I was talking about! Lol

I'm glad you are still making reports! I've been gone for 9 years lol but I'm glad I'm finally settled haha. Wanna go fish?

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Originally Posted by XMrxSEAUx

I'm glad you are still making reports! I've been gone for 9 years lol but I'm glad I'm finally settled haha. Wanna go fish?

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My Fall fishing plan is to hit Irvine a lot and then do some Tuna and Yellowtail fishing. I'm going to hit Gusati next Thursday afternoon for catfish. (it's the last catfish stocking of the season) and then try to rent some kid for the Sept 21 kid's catfish derby at La Mirada Regional park. Their is going to be 2 more Orange County Regional park catfish stockings. Then wait for Lake Wohlford to start stocking trout in early December. I am an opportunist and will hit anything good that comes along! The classic example was that ridiculous trout stocking they had in June at Lake Silverwood! (We hit that 3 times in 7 day's) So if any of that works for you, let me know? Lol

Since Sablefish (i.e. Black Cod) like cold water, it could be due to global warming that they aren't around locally anymore? I hear that people are now catching species that came up from Mexico here and there these days.

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Originally Posted by Natural Lefty

Since Sablefish (i.e. Black Cod) like cold water, it could be due to global warming that they aren't around locally anymore? I hear that people are now catching species that came up from Mexico here and there these days.

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The whole Salt water fishing has been turned up side down in the last 40 years! I'll give a few examples that people can't explain. Some you can explain to over fishing like Rock Cod and Calico Bass, while others are just a mystery to what happened to them. The Sand Bass I already named, but happened to the Albacore and the Barracuda? The big positive in the last 5 years is, where did these Trophy Blue fin tuna come from? Their is a gentlemen that runs a small charter boat operation locally, and what he caught in the last month is hard to believe. Numerous 200-300 pound Blue fin tuna on an daily basis! I think Global warming is too simple of an answer, but it has something to do with it!

Also, since we are talking about fish disappearing, whatever happened to the anchovies? We used that great live bait for years and years. Are they back? (I have not fished the open ocean for a long time.)