Great Fishing Trip – Sunday, October 7th

After a morning family cruise, Andy and I headed out for some afternoon fishing. I just wanted to get out and test some of the tweaks I had made to the boat. If we caught anything, it would just be icing on the cake. We ended up with a lot of icing.

We got a late start (2:00 pm), so we decided to launch at Dana Landing which is close to the house. By 2:20 we were idling out of the basin. We headed toward the mouth of the bay on the beginning of an incoming tide to see what the wind was doing. I expected a lot of breeze, so the plan was to drift the lee shore of the breakwater.

Well, the conditions were great as we got up to speed and made our way to the end of the breakwater. Andy knows the area better than I do and he suggested we head toward the OB pier. So we made a left turn and looked for kelp and life in the water.

After about 15-20 minutes we stopped outside the kelp and started a drift. We only had plastics and some crocodiles, our normal style of fishing.

After about two casts, we saw barracuda everywhere. I put on a crocodile and it was barracuda after barracuda on every cast. They were all pretty small (10-15″, some bigger), but a lot of fun on lite tackle. Occasionally we would get a big mackerel.

We were having a blast with the cuda. Lots of jumps and non-stop action. There was another boat about a mile from us and we could hear them cheering too. This was far better than I was expecting.

2007-10-07_IMG_3090One of the things I was testing was the new GPS/fish finder that I got through amazon.com gift certificates earned through credit card points. Nothing beats “free” gear. I could easily see where we had been, so it was easy to repeat drifts through the good spots.

We repeating our basic drift slowing moving further south when I got a good bite (compared to the cuda). It was my first Calico on the new (to me) boat.

It was probably close to 4pm at this point. There was a lot of bait and we had probably gotten 20+ cuda between us. Too many to care about the camera. With the late start, we were just happy to catch anything.

2007-10-07_IMG_3094Then Andy got a good bite on the plastic. It got wrapped up on a lobster pot, so I motored up current of it. At first it looked like a big Calico. Moving the boat unwrapped it and we got it to the boat. WSB! It turned out to be 1″ too short so we let it swim away. We were both pretty excited. It was Andy’s first White Sea Bass, so he was particularly happy.

All in all, we had 2 WSB (released), 25 or so cuda, 8 Calicos and about 5 12″ mackerel (maybe more). Actually, we release all of the fish.

We were back on the trailer by sunset (6:30?) after 35+ fish in about 3 hours of fishing. Not too many trophies, but it was a blast. Cast, wind and a fish. Nothing wrong with that on a Sunday afternoon.

I was very happy that the boat worked well. I was particularly happy that the lights I have worked so hard on worked.

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