Well, I was off again to the Channel Islands hoping to break my White Sea Bass PB. Fishing was hot 2 days prior but of course dropped to almost nothing on the night before we were leaving.
Get to his house and take off at 3:00 am... a fairly easy ride (except for LA) all the way up to Ventura. We did the usual and unloaded at the ramp.
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People up there do not know how to launch a boat... I was in shock how they all launched it like they were on a freshwater lake somewhere. In any case, Matt arrived, we packed the boat and were on our way...
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We get past Anacapa and see swarms of diving birds! Hole sh!t! We run over to them and start casting. I know I saw some WSB in there, but we couldn't get through all of the snot logs! I haven't seen this many cuda in years!!! We caught about a half dozen each trying to get the WSB to commit, but called it after they destroyed much of our plastics.
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Well, we kept pushing forward to the intel where to make some squid. As we were approaching the grounds, we thought we saw a sub in the water.... Nope...
Turns out it was a capsized catamaran! WTF!
(https://i.imgur.com/6ZuXtFh.jpeg)
We had eyes on it but someone else must have called it in since 15 minutes later a tow boat arrived.
(https://i.imgur.com/c4NKEG6.jpeg)
Well, it happened to be at the squid grounds, so we loaded up with squid as we watched the boats try to tow the capsized cat into shallower water. In any case, mission accomplished!
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This trip was going to be tougher than we thought. Our intel was limited and the fleet was spread out all around all of the islands. Capt Matt bought some sweet new electronics so we scoured the data and try to glass out what was going on through the gyros.
(https://i.imgur.com/gDAya09.jpeg)
Basically, we scoured the usual spots with no luck, so we went to where we went the last time. Instead of schools of squid, there were only schools of baby rockfish! I need to find what these were, but there were billions of them just in this area alone!
Possibly a new species of rockfish if I could ever identify it at this stage...
(https://i.imgur.com/XmSzhIO.jpeg)
Well, Scott and Matt went back and forth on where to set up as swarms of baby rockfish apparently are not good for a WSB bite. I'm not sure how true it is, but they both were set on trying a new spot.
We made the move to an area Scott really wanted to check out and set up for the night. There were no squid or bait there, but we decided to give it a fresh start in the morning.
Time to hit the sack.
(https://i.imgur.com/CmUWJEw.jpeg)
Part II coming soon.
Looks built like a bocaccio or chili. I've caught a juvenile chili before though and it didn't have that coloration.
Almost looks like writing on his side the way the coloring is 8)