My sister is coming down this weekend and wants to try a local fish 'n chips joint while she's here. I thought for a good long while about where to take her, and realized the best beer battered fish I've had was my own. Which meant I needed to catch something worth beer battering. Really only the best for my sister...so I had to catch some paisans.
I knew I had a hookup somewhere somehow through work to catch some rockfish. I ended up getting hooked up with a trip on the Freelance out of Davey's Locker.
The counts were kind of mediocre but I know where they fish so I figured with the conditions, I could fight for a limit even if the rental rods struggle.
So I hopped aboard and ingratiated myself with the captain whom I've fished with before on another work trip. I told him my mission and he says I'm on the right boat. Simple plan, but other boats already started heading to Catalina to struggle and scout, which I wanted nothing to do with. The Freelance has had 50+ people on board for weekday trips recently so I was fearing the worst, but it ended up being a very reasonable load of about 30, which honestly looked to me like 20. 80' boat helps I suppose.
Weather was great. High tide at 0900 and low at 1500. Warm, no wind til noon.
(https://i.imgur.com/wTcgS1Fh.jpeg)
First stop was tough. Managed a honeycomb rockfish that I threw back. There was comb jelly in the water, aggregating on the line. I thought it was just another gelatinous bullsh!t until I tried taking it off and it stung me, irritation like fiberglass or nettle. Went away after 20 minutes but sometimes the line would just randomly fling it onto my arms in droplets and it would irritate my skin for the next while. Not great!
Second stop next to an oil rig, got my first paisan of the day. Looked up at the pilot house and I saw this seagull aura farming.
(https://i.imgur.com/iYGKxD5h.jpeg)
Next few stops I started putting together my bag of strictly bocaccio. They do love the fluke more than any other rockfish, though I'm a bit surprised I didn't get any reds or sculpin. The boat started really loading up on barely legal sculpin, and I completely f@cking ignored that bite and stuck to my task.
The bite petered out and I had somewhere around 8-10 paisans in the bag. Then we started shallower for whitefish. The whitefish didn't really wanna play. I got 3, only 1 being barely worth keeping.
I ended with an overall count like 10 bocaccio, 3 whitefish, 1 sculpin, 1 honeycomb. The last 2 hours were pretty much dead.
I was mentally prepared to catch 300 bocaccio for the boat, so I neglected the in-hand pics. Here's what little proof I had that I caught fish:
(https://i.imgur.com/9vvDHvfh.jpeg)
I had an excellent time. Being solo, I ended up befriending a family of dad + 2 early 20s boys that were total newbs, but very friendly and open minded. I nicknamed them the Bandaid Brigade. First the youngest gets stung by a sculpin, not terribly but needed treatment and continued fishing. Then the dad hooked himself past the barb. Then the oldest gets stung by a sculpin near the fish bags, only lightly. Completely ridiculous. But they held tough!
Solid crew, relaxed day, no thorns in my side (I only ended up in 1 tangle!), sister will be fed fish n' chips this weekend. Nice Wednesday f@cking off from work.