Fishing has been slow this year, but the classic 3 B’s are back. We headed out for a casual Sunday afternoon on the kelp. My main goal was some fresh air knowing the fishing has been slow. We ended up with the 3 B’s: Barracuda, (calico) Bass and Bonito.
I’d say fishing this “summer” has been a little grim. The water has been cooler, and the storms have come through later. This adds up to cold and dirty water. Not what we want for good summer fishing. But, the bonito have come through in force for the first time in many years. They have been big too. Volumes seem to be down, but is some places, the quality is up. Sunday’s trip showed much better water quality.
My initial goal was just to get out for some fresh air. It had been a very long and stressful week. I wasn’t too concerned about catching anything, but that is a nice benefit. Once I get out there and into it, I usually get focused and then really want to succeed. The tides and current weren’t great, so we headed strait out and put a rapala in to troll a little. We started to get near where I want to give our first try and started to reel in the tolling line. It felt like I had some kelp. It was a small barracuda.
So I decided to put in the rapala again while we trolled around a little more. 5 minutes later we got a decent bonito. That was pretty fun. 15 more minutes of trolling didn’t yield anything so we made a drift through the kelp. The current was all wrong so we moved spots.
We found a little channel in the kelp where we got some sugar/Johnny bass. Then the wind started to die a little and the sun got lower. We were throwing the iron and were getting a lot of boils. We weren’t catching anything, but it it exciting to see them boil hard on your jigs. My friend got a calico and some mackarel. I decided to go with smaller jigs and that managed to get me a few more barracuda.
Then I went to an even smaller kast master. That was good for some barracuda and a near record calico bass for me. It was tiny. I may have gotten one smaller, but I don’t know if they come smaller. I wasn’t looking for my record smallest fish, but I still managed to get all of the 3 B’s.