Half arsed report from Dockweiler

[Vansmack]

Camped at Dockweiler over Mothers Day with some friends, hit the beach Friday evening my buddy gets one small BSP. Well, at least he did not get skunked. He was using sand crabs, I started with anchovy and squid pieces, then switched to sand crabs. No bites, no nothing, bummer. Well, plenty of seaweed, lots of that. My line finds seaweed like my golf ball finds trees. So I get to hear it all night while sitting by the camp fire what a better fisherman he is.

Saturday morning I roll out of my trailer at the crack of 9, his wife tells me he is already fishing. Grab the gear and go. He already landed one large BSP and is randomly getting some small ones. I start up and both of us are now occasionally bringing smaller to medium BSP. I put on a Lucky Craft and go out on the Hyperion rocks and eventually something large and dark, but not too wide follows it in and hits it about 15' away. I can see the dark but can't make out what it was. I was a very hard strike but the hook didn't set. I keep tossing in the same area but nothing. We hang it up until the evening. Saturday night went well. We were both landing large and small BSP regularly, constant bites. He lands another fish, what is it? he says. That's a Yellow Fin Croaker! We both are dragging those in now, what a fun fish!! Wish I brought lighter gear, it would have been even funner!! For two of the larger BSP, as I'm taking the hook out, they start crapping out babies. Damn!! I tell my daughter to pick them up and put them in the water. They probably became food for something else, but maybe not.

In case you didn't already think you were there, here is the half *** part. We had no camera. The only picture I have is of the custom stainless steel sand crab scoop my buddy made. It's kind of big, it think it is 6" tubing, in one scoop, we had about 75 1-1.5" sand crabs. He added a fitted piece of expanded metal to the bottom to get smaller sand crabs. The thing worked great, although it is a little heavy. Needs another handle across the front.