Yellowtail are licking on the Southern CA Half-Day Boat out of Pierpoint landing
If anyone accuses me of blowing up the local yellowtail bite, they can just kiss my Hiney!!!!!! lol It's funny when the ocean is right, as in the right conditions fish will be biting in multiply locations. Yellowtail are biting along the CA coast and at the local islands and beyond. Pick the right boat on a good day and hold on for your life you will be rewarded!!! I've been trying to fish for yellowtail at the Islands for a couple of weeks now, but something always keeps getting in the way. The only thing I seem to have time for is the Half-Day yellowtail fishing. After hitting the New Del Mar on Friday, I then was looking for a Island fishing trip to jump on. They are biting well at the Coronado's and San Clemente Island. The problem is my schedule looks sucking again this week. (So what's a boy to do??) Go after the Half-Day yellowtail!!!!! I check the fish counts on a daily basis and the Southern Cal started catching them again on Friday. On Sunday they bite really well for them and I wondered if the weather would allow me to fish for them on Monday. After checking the best weather forecast I could get, it seemed their was a weather window Monday morning, "so I went for it!!!!"
Everything started out perfect, partly cloudy sky's and a full tank of good Sardines. We left Long Beach and headed for the 150 spot. (for those of you who don't know where that is, it those two big oil rigs you can see off in the distance) not to be confused with the ones off of Huntington Beach. It was the same drill as Friday, all sonar schools of Big yellowtail. There was one difference, a lot of the fish were caught on the yo yo Iron, but at times these schools would come up and boil around the boat. Which means you could fly line a Sardine to catch one, so I rigged up for both types of fishing. The first hour of fishing we drove around and stopped on a couple of sonar marks, but got no takers. I figured this would be a good time to order a Cheeseburger. After getting about 3/4 of the Cheeseburger devoured, the captain get's on the PA with a very excited voice and say's to his deckhand Arron, SCOOP SCOOP SCOOP the sardines over the side. It's a big school of yellowtail right under the boat. I go to my yo yo setup first and crank away but get no takers. Then two things happened simultaneously, a funnel clouded appeared and dropped gallons of water on us in seconds. Then the whole back of the boat exploded with boiling yellowtail!!!!! I said to myself, screw the yo yo rig their right on top and grabbed my bait stick. All's I needed to do was get my sardine to swim away from the boat and it was an instant hookup. I picked a good sardine and it was immediately inhaled by a #20 plus pound yellowtail. He headed straight for the bow away from the other hooked fish. Remember I told you that funnel cloud opened up on us and tried to drown everybody, now it was hailing on us!!!!! I never in my life was ever totally drenched by the rain fighting a big yellowtail and having hail hit me in the face and loving every minute of it!!! Man I was relieved though when the gaff hit that fish!!!!!!!
After wringing out my flannel shirt I was ready to do it again!!!!!! It stopped raining for a bit to give everyone a break. About 30 minutes later I hear SCOOP SCOOP SCOOP!!!!!! This time it mostly goes wide open on the yo yo jigs. I'm cranking away and "I GET NOTHING!!!!!!" I should have just by the volume of the fish hooked!!!!!! I concluded my Jig SUCKED!!!! These fish bite different colors then the MDR fish. Scrambled egg was good, red worked, the smaller jigs got bit a little and they like this funky orange color like a rock cod lure. The third biting stop of the day was a funny stop, by then I had switched over to Scrambled egg 6x jo jo jig. It was mostly a bait stop on 8-12 lbs yellowtail. (where the heck did these fish come from???) New fish is my best guess!!!!!! That was it for our Half-Day trip, 3 biting stops for 31 yellowtail. Not bad in the rain for the second day of March. Of course on the way in we had sunny sky's to help dry our cloths!!!! I hoped you enjoyed reading my fishing adventure on "the Southern CA Half-Day boat."
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Originally Posted by jaggerbub
