Launched 0530 in Newport. Was supposed to meet Omar but he slept through his alarm. Boooooooooooo

Got on the board quick with the dropshot.



Broke off another on a pillar, then got a similar size in short succession.

Got quiet for about an hour then pulled a micro spotty.

Decided to cross the channel to an area I had yet to fish. Spent an hour over there not getting any bites.

Fished the middle of the channel over a presumed drop-off. Got a sand bass on board and the brunch cruise boat that I used to work on, biggest ship in the harbor, was getting ready for the morning brunch. The captain saw it in my hand and honked at me in approval, waking up everyone in the harbor. I do appreciate the attention.



Caught another shortly after. Looks like the ones I find around heavier structure, but not much structure in the channel.



Got off the water before 10, 5 to hand. Better than 4.


Also tried Huntington harbor on Friday and got a few bites but wore the skunk. Saw a big sea turtle which was cool.

Went out Friday afternoon and got 4 more, just with different lures than the day before. Used dropshot some more and they liked that. Broke off 2 fish on pilings immediately with 8#. Wanted limper line for 3" flukes but I guess I gotta take what bites I can get on 15#, which was a few still.





All my underspin keeps catching are dinky turds, 3/3 now on the last 3 trips.



From about 50 yards across the channel, a ~30' express boat was idling by with half a dozen older women and maybe a guy or two. One of the ladies called out, "Catch anything?" I just gave a thumbs up. Then, "Are you single?" I smiled and gave a little aw-shucks hand wave. Now I can't help but think that the Dave Scadden Slash is making me look more attractive on the water.


Reorganized my 3600 trays some more today and added a tray. I'd like to try some small flat falls, rattle traps, new swimbait colors, and spinnerbaits. Dropping a couple oversized or otherwise useless plastics. I bought a Plano 3700 Weekender Bag which holds 3 3700 trays but I don't see how I'm going to secure it to the tube so it might just do boat bag duties. I do love my organizing...

Relatively quick after work session. 1630-1930 or so. Light wind, warm.

Switched out lures a couple times before the fish decided they wanted nuclear chicken for dinner.



This one stuck me on a piling but I won the war.



A few more bites on that then it shut off. Switched to a pearl swimbait on an underspin and got a dink sandy, then zero bites on that.

Another carousel of lures, an hour goes by before I got another on the fluke.



~8 bites and 4 fish. Surprised it wasn't more consistent with the big tide I had going for me. May go slashin' around after work again tomorrow, not sure if I wanna do Newport or Huntington. I'm sure I will decide on the freeway home.

I am fairly quiet for having used the tube 4 times in the last 10 days, forgot to post at the end of last weekend but I did wanna consolidate each weekend. So now it will be one line reports:

5/1: Newport after work w/ Jared - 3 spotties for me, 1 for him. Barely a two hour session but we got a little bass thumb.





5/2: Alamitos solo - skunk. No bites. Tons of current. It intrigued me enough to try again.

5/7: Huntington solo - skunk. 0/5 on bites. Farmed one on the last cast. Incredibly aggravating, but with zero tide swing, 5 bites in a brand new zone was hope inducing.

5/10: Alamitos solo - 1 sand bass. 5-10 other soft bites. Threw everything at them trying to convert the soft biters into fish and hand but they never showed their cards. Covered a ton of water.



Not concerning at all.




My legs are pretty much used to the exercise at this point. Slowly getting my system dialed. Bringing my 3' gaff now    . I'm probably exploring too much water too early and need to lock one spot down for confidence, so I might do Newport once a week and then some exploratory trip at another time in the week.

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.



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.



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:



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.

Launched 0630. Misting on me when I got out of the car. Not 10 minutes to set up this first time, nice change from the kaboat. Also brought a new (refurbished) combo, Calcutta 100b and a GCX inshore (absolute noodle).



Walked the boat about 100 yards to the beach, put on my neoprene socks and fins, shoved off. Easy!

10 minutes in and I get my first bite, missed. 0fer1. I see Jake and Omar+brother launching.

Jake gets first skunk off. I split to the opposite side of the channel of them. Went 0/4 on bites pretty quick with a 5" fluke before shifting way down in size to a 2" fluke/minnow dropshot. A couple more missed bites and I was properly aggravated as everyone but me had broken the skunk.

Finally I popped a dink spotty, lifted it out of the water next to me and it shook off. I count it! One cast later and all three of the other guys are hooked up and asking why I'm not hooked up. I love fishing with friends! I got one to the boat a couple minutes later, similar dink size.



Everyone starts piling and I fall behind on the numbers quick. Then a pancake decides to entertain me.



At this point it's something like my 3 to Jake's 8 to Omar's 6, then the bite dies down. I decide to wander off a different direction than them, either find my own fish or at least separate myself from the competitive voice in my head for a bit.

Popped one on my own, then decided I had hit the apex of the route and I needed to fight the wind back. Made my way over to docks out of the wind and started getting short bites.

Took a while, but once I started getting close to my landing spot, I got slammed while reeling up my fluke to cast again and it took me for some drag pulls and good dogging. Turned out to be a 16" turd roller. Not a bad sandie and certainly an excellent harbor fish.



Only a few docks from my landing spot and I get slammed again, calling it a last cast fish. I was totally dry all day until this cranky spotty pushed a ton of water with its tail into my crotch.



Landed around 1130.

Jake ended up with 18, Omar with 12, Omar's brother with 10, me with 6. I would have called 6 a successful day on my own but their numbers have me quite salty. But, I'll bring some 3" and 4" flukes next time, finally get my side compartments in the mail for the tube, dial in my tackle trays, and I'll be primed to make someone else salty next time.

The tube was dry, turned well (made a good choice on my fins), didn't get blown around (although the wind wasn't as bad as expected), slow but probably a hair faster than conventional tubes. I realize the main action of my leg muscles is basically a forward kick, so when I go to the gym I should do slow, high intensity bike exercises with my feet strapped in, and pull up on the pedals more than push down to increase endurance. 1.5 miles today has me sore.

Ordered the Slash float tube from Dave Scadden Paddlesports last Sunday. Put in the order and the website said I would get my email confirmation shortly. I never did.

It's a small business, so Monday I had the option to call or text customer service, so I texted while at work.



Waited through the week, was excited to try it out on the weekend. Nothing through Friday so texted Friday. I started to get the sense that I am texting Dave Scadden and he is on a backpacking trip.



Nothing Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Jared let me borrow a tube to fish Sunday, but as I inflated it to start the session, I found a large pin hole. So I turned right back and went home.

Monday (today) it arrives after work!



It's a hair bigger than expected, and my storage solution for this is still unclear. Alicia is currently super pleased that it's inflated in the living room for the night to check for leaks.

I'm mostly going to fish harbors with it, but I will certainly use it in freshwater in the Sierras, maybe small SD lakes, and I'm thinking about surf launching to fish a couple bits of structure within a few hundred yards of the beach. I decided to splurge on this since I realized my next real boat is ~2 years out and surfperch have purportedly gone extinct.

And of course it's 10+mph winds every chance I would have to fish for the next 10 days, when we just had nearly 2 months of immaculate weather. So we will see when it gets its maiden voyage.

Dave was poring over information on halibut after the trip and brought it to my attention that California Halibut are not "true" halibut. I had to double check, and it appears true.

These fish are distinguished by their massive size (often exceeding 400 pounds), a distinct diamond-shaped body (rather than round), and forked or concave tails. They are almost exclusively "right-eyed," meaning that as they mature, their eyes migrate to the right side of their head.

Which leaves only the Atlantic Halibut and Pacific Halibut, in their own genus of Hippoglossus.

Every now and then it bugged me that people would say they target flounder in SoCal and now I see that I was foolish to feel at odds with their naming of things. Foolish!

Does a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Does a butt by any other name smell as stinky?

I've been getting bugged by everyone at work to try float tubing. I've told them that I'm afraid of sea lions, sea lions killed my family, and I don't like sea lions. Really, I was probably putting it off because if I like it then that means I need to buy more sh!t. Finally I said yes.

It was supposed to be myself along with 4 other guys, but that plan seemed to disintegrate in the atmosphere, just as Artemis II did not! Just me and Dave. I borrowed Dave's inflatable pontoon and flippers, and he was on his Hobie yak.

I arrived around 0700. Having grabbed the pontoon off Dave the day before, I inflated it and prepped. Realized I forgot sunscreen...



Dave showed up around 0745 and we launched into Newport by 0800 or so.

I started with a fluke on a swing head. Dave said something about some kind of JDM soft plastic. He was on 'em quick and went 3 for 4 in the first hour. I was still trying to figure out how to turn at that point.

It took at least 2 hours before I got my first bite. Felt nice and it stole my fluke(!). Put a fresh one on and on the next mooring I nailed my first fish in what feels like 10 trips.



We were at the apex of our trip and finally the bite turned on a bit for me. I ended up getting 3 spotties and this ~16" halibut in 30 minutes or so.



Dave wanted in so I gave him the same lure. 5 minutes later, he gets hooks up. "Oh it's just weeds...[zzZZZZZzzz]!!!"

Ended up being his first legal halibut at about 26". He was about to gill it and keep it for dinner when...it made good on its name. It floundered, as it never floundered before, out of the yak, and slipped away...burgers it is.



Finished a little after 1100 I believe...what started as yet another cursed trip turned into something much more memorable!

I am, of course, researching float tubes now.

Had this up for a while and thought I should post it here as well. Also I've gotten like 5 "dislikes" on this video on youtube and I don't know why? Too much heavy breathing? Idk, it exists as a reference and some people are finding it useful.

Forgot to post this here when I originally made it a while ago, but it's become surprisingly popular on YouTube so I thought I would throw it up on the forum as well.

Alicia decided about a week ago that now is the time that she wants to try a camping trip. I ran through my options. Something local like the Angeles forest would be boring to me. Big Sur would be awesome, but $80 to sleep on the ground with the possibility of her hating it didn't sit well with me. I realized I still hadn't been to the Eastern Sierras, so I started honing in. I almost settled on Tuttle Creek Campground near the Mt. Whitney Portal, but the roads into the mountains were closed for the season which would limit our ability to do anything but check out the small creek there, and the Owens access in that area is limited.

So I decided to go a little further north of that to Goodale Creek Campground, 30 miles south of Bishop, then book it to the Upper Owens the next day in the morning.

First time driving up the 395 was great. A few slow trucks bogged us down but we made good time. I'm in an online Geology class right now which has freshened up my enthusiasm for all the geological varieties and wonders along the way.

We got to the campground at about 1400. Amazing skyline, Mt. Whitney a little south of us...









uhhhhh basalt!!!



Unfortunately, Goodale Creek which flowed just steps from the campground was completely shrouded in trees and shrubs. Basically no access to fish, and the host claimed there were definitely no fish in it. Google has much to say on the contrary, but I had absolutely nothing to work with from the campground. Here was the only fishable spot and it was barren.



Weather was supposed to be 70º/50º, but it felt a lot more like 90º at the afternoon peak and 50º in the morning. Quite a bit of warm wind came off the mountains from sunset until about 0300, which actually made me quite hot through the night until it died off, then I quickly became miserably cold. Relatively miserable sleep despite a healthy dose of ZzzQuil.

About 0700, we packed up camp and headed north. Not before being intercepted by Koga for a toll on the way out of the campground.





We got breakfast at 0800 at Jack's Restaurant, diner with trophy trout mounts and good breakfast.

Next we headed to Convict Lake for a little walk, as Jared made it clear he would not respect a decision on my part to forego visiting it. He was absolutely right to insist.



Bunch of perv trout trying to interrupt two otherwise consenting trouts.



The water was gin clear and the trout were very aware that it's still a month til Fishmas.

I spy:



On to the Owens...I didn't have a ton of time, what with these explorational activities. I put in about an hour and I did not see any fish whatsoever. Quite a few guys fishing and not catching. Beautiful country, but I didn't get sniffed on nymph nor micro spoon.



Alicia insisted we visit a hot spring nearby. It turned out to be 15 minutes down a dirt road. I was hoping it would just be right on the side of the road since we had essentially just done 2 other hikes, but it was down a little canyon and Alicia wanted the closer look.



Thankfully, my whole day, and maybe trip, was made by seeing that the Owens community has rigorous safety standards in their vault toilets, see on the lid:



It turns out that the hot spring is part of broader volcanic activity. This area is known as the Long Valley Caldera, a massive 8x15 mile volcano that is still active and monitored. Further evidence of recent volcanic activity can be seen upon the walls of the vault toilet.

Traffic on the way down was fantastic, took the 14 to the 5 instead of the 15 and only got the backside of 7pm LA traffic. Plus, got gas in Bishop at 5.09, which felt like an absolute steal in this particular moment, and got excellent fuel economy rolling downhill back to SoCal.

Alicia seems to like camping. I'm reminded that it leaves me with much less than 100% in my battery for the day, between the miserable sleep and extra physicality. Gotta love BLM campground pricing though, along with the views. Next time I will probably stay somewhere between the Upper Owens and Bishop and focus all my efforts there, although there are some golden trout opportunities in that Whitney Portal area that I would like to try eventually. Overall beautiful part of the state that I regret not visiting sooner. Maybe one day my salmonid curse will lift and I will have some great fishing days up there as well.

Spur of the moment trip! Alicia wants to camp for the first time, one night excursion. I settled on the eastern Sierras as I have never been. Gonna do Thursday into Friday. Was gonna do Lone Pine area but seems like it might be a bit boring with the mountain roads closed. Gotta keep the lady entertained too, not just a fishing trip. But, you know...

Might stay a little further north at a BLM campground then push north the next day to the Upper Owens.

Bringing 4wt fly rod and UL gear. Gotta start crimping my barbs.

This topic has been moved to Freshwater Shore Fishing Reports.

https://www.prehistoricsoulforum.com/index.php?topic=5842.0

Finally fished a tiny pond down the street that gets state trout stocking. I saw it got stocked last week so I went for it. Water was less than 6" visibility but I did get a few bumps on a 2g spoon as I did a lap around the pond. Saw a couple dried up trout carcasses on the shoreline, so it's true it gets stocked at least. Not sure if it was fishermen or birds that left the carcasses there, though. Beautiful day!

It was such a beautiful day, in fact, that the vitamin D went straight to my head, and I said f@ck it! I'm not going into work on Monday. So I called out, slept in, and went to the pond again and soaked Powerbait eggs for a bit. Didn't get nudged, so did a lap around with a 1/8oz silver KM without a bump and dipped. Another nice day though.

Can't help but think that the trout in this pond couldn't last more than a couple days with how scummy the water is, even with all the aerators.

Fished 2 spots this morning with Jake on a big outgoing tide, 0930-1245.

First was totally new to me and looked promising from the satellite view, but got no bites. Several hurdles for that spot, but might be okay on an incoming instead of an outgoing tide next time.

Second spot was also tough. Soaked for bats and for UL critters, only got a few short bites on the UL. Some signs of rays feeding on the shoreline. Walked by a guy who said he hadn't caught anything, then walked by his stringer of short spotties. I would have called the DFW if he weren't packing up.

Dog off of a leash ran into the water and into my UL line at one point, thankfully didn't get tangled. I recently dog-sat for a big doodle and the experience further enlightened me to all the hazards for dogs. It affirms my view of how many stupid dog owners are out there.

Hot day! Drank a whole gatorade, even took my shirt off for a wee bit to activate some melanin. Unfortunately I blinded Jake and he will be unable to pre-fish with me tomorrow.

Gonna try something else for pre-fishing tomorrow, not entirely sure what but it will probably involve an incoming tide.

Fished Belmont with my coworker Dave this morning, 0900-1100. Started quite nippy, probably 55, and warmed up to 65 pretty quick. High tide was 1130.

Water was pretty clean, LA River hadn't dumped a bunch of garbage onto the shoreline which was nice.

Shortly after I arrived, I saw a light tackle guy hook up to something good 50 yards away. I figured he would need a hand with landing it so I walked over to him. He was pretty green to surf fishing and was happy for the help. His drag was set really light and he admitted this was his first season of surf fishing so I started coaching him up quite a bit, resetting his drag and telling him to put more muscle to the fish because he was letting it sit on the bottom too much. Every time I told him to move to get in front of the fish he way over corrected and walked well past it. But, after some time, it came up and it was a nice butterfly ray around 30". No way to grip that thing so I just kinda got between it and the small waves and slowly pushed it up the sand a bit. Took his pics for him and shoved it off. He was very grateful and I may see him there again soon, nice guy.

For the rest of the time, Dave and I got nary a bump throwing LCFMs and I later switched to a KM. Gave up at 1100 and his girlfriend joined us from the dog park down the way and we got some great burgers at a spot called Grill 'Em All (metal themed burger joint on the harbor). I will definitely eat there again. Rooftop seating had a great view of the harbor.

Took my Tuesday fishing time to try jetty fishing. Peak low 1530, wind from the southwest at about 10 and getting up to a stiff 15 by 1700.

I was excited to try a new handmade bucktail I got off eBay last month. First cast was to the ocean side of the jetty, into the wind. Hits bottom, give it a twitch and the line just releases. Wtf? Reel up and my leader connection just kind of unraveled. 10# braid to 30# leader, I tied an Alberto by doubling up the braid but it didn't tighten down how it usually does. I should have cut it and tried again. Sad I didn't get a full cast in with the new bucktail, but I ordered two more while I was still on the jetty.

Second cast was with a dropshot, 2oz torpedo and a white z-man fluke. Got it stuck between rocks at my feet and broke off. Should I go home? That's what the stripers would want me to do. I tied on another dropshot.

Kept fishing but switched to the harbor side because it was easier to get my presentation over the rocks without breaking off. Got a few bites while the wind picked up. Finally just as I was about to leave, I get slammed mid-channel by mr. calico.



Called it a last cast fish and went home as the sun was starting to set. Happy to get a little slime on my hands.

I've bought like 30 spools of this suuuuuper cheap braid called Gevicont over the past 7 years or so. A 1000m spool of multi-colored (every ~36') 8 strand braid was like $45. I don't think I have ever had a failure from it once and it's on over 20 of my reels.

Yesterday I went to buy another 1000m for a Tiagra 50W I just picked up and their whole Amazon store is out of stock. Makes me wish I would have gone ahead and bought even bigger spools in bulk just in case they went out of business.

Hoping they come back around or some other nonsense Amazon store decides to sell their stock but I'm pretty bummed. I get deals on PowerPro but PowerPro doesn't have 8 strand color coated line, and even with the discount it would definitely be more expensive than Gevicont.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HRB4TWS/?colid=1GIABNQW3T5ZF&coliid=IJBR5P9QNRMS4&ref_=list_c_wl_lv_ov_lig_pab

Looking at Hercules braided line on Amazon. It's not quite as inexpensive but it might be the same quality. Thinking about ordering a 100m spool and testing out breaking strength and knots and stuff.

https://www.amazon.com/Hercules-Braided-10lbs-200lbs-Superline-Multicolor/dp/B0791CZC6F/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8&th=1

Fished Newport Harbor with Peter. I arrived a couple hours before him at 1600. 10-15mph wind in the face, cold. Awful tide swing, low at noon and high at 0400 the next day, all you need to know.

Found a decent sized blackgill rockfish washed up, relatively fresh. Somebody f@cked up and probably learned that they f@cked up once they got to the harbor.



I wanted to experiment with a floating Powerbait egg on a short c-rig on UL to see if I could find a little critter to commit. I got several taps but nothing committed.

Switched over to flukes on neck breakers once Peter arrived around 1800. Wind still howling. We ended up each getting one.



Left around 19:45.

I wanna make Tuesdays my weekday fishing days for the time being, to accommodate Alicia's school schedule among other things. Next Tuesday is a little ridiculous with the wind and rain but sometimes that's fun.