After my fly fishing trip on the 6th, I was psyched about chasing fish. But the impromptu day-fishing trip often means using bass gear from downtown rocks to find spotties - spotted sand bass (Paralabrax maculatofasciatus).
Here's one from a while back.Spotties are possibly the most abundant fish in SD Bay. Of course, they may just be the most willing to fall for a red, sparkly, fish-shaped lure.
On Saturday morning, the 9th, I woke up, and as usual checked my computer for new emails, my usual websites, and eventually popped up my "dashboard" on my iMac to check weather & tides widgets. I was pretty shocked to see that at 9 a.m. it was already almost 70 degrees. I'd been used to seeing something near the mid-50s. I walked back through my room and threw open the curtains and it was beautiful out. I picked two bass rods out of the fishing-rod tee pee that occupies a corner of my bedroom, grabbed my yellow shore-hopping daypack, and quickly filled it with lure boxes, tools, Cliff bars, and whatever else I had handy, and got ready to head out.
The absolute closest spot where I can get a line in the water happens to be right smack downtown. It also happens to be a spot that's a pretty well-kept secret, as well as a place a lot of people just aren't willing to try out. You fish literally in the shadow of San Diego's high rises... and you have to feed a parking meter. I've actually gotten a 25-dollar parking ticket, trying to add my tenth fish to a real good two-hour meter period before work.
I'm going combine my Saturday the 9th, and Wednesday the 12th trips into one report, because they aren't worth addressing separately, and these get too long anyway. These trips both started in the morning, around 10, and the two-hour meter gave me until noon. I caught 2 spotties Saturday, and three Wednesday, and worked real hard for each one. The only difference is Saturday, I walked back to my car and saw that there were still 15 minutes on the meter, so I walked over to the calm, marina side of my spot, and cast a ghost shrimp-colored swimbait as far as I could, let it sink until it hit bottom and bounced it back to shore. Reel, reel stop, reel, reel, reel, stop, reel, reel, strike! I picked up my second spotted bass. Sweet. As I was releasing it, I saw a boil on the surface, about 15 yards straight out in front me. Something large had chased its prey to the surface. I cast in the vicinity of the boil, let it sink a couple feet and burned it back to me, hoping to induce a strike. But, no. Most of the time, that moment is gone before you ever get a chance to cast, much less twice. I threw again anyway, I only had a few more minutes on my meter, and as soon as I put my reel in gear, and started to reel, it gets hit, and my rod bends hard toward the water. I was a little taken aback how heavy the fish pulled. In fact I got a little too excited, and set the hook like a TV bass-fishing host, and my line snapped loudly. I never saw the fish. I reeled in my line, walked to my car, and drove home, a little disappointed in myself for losing such a great fish. But it's early in the season...
Sunday the 10th, I had plans to fish with my buddy Scott. He's got a fun 14-foot aluminum boat. Typically, when we take the "S.S. Rat Turd" out it's usually a fly fishing trip in the deep south of San Diego Bay. The deep south bay is a lot different than the rest of the bay in that it's very shallow, there's much less boat traffic, and there's a serenity that makes it a different experience than the sailboat regatta nearer the bridge, or the chaos up towards the mouth of the bay.
The shallow water, the distance from the mouth of the bay, and a warm-water outlet from a power plant lead to the speculation that the deep south bay holds exotic species not often found in the more pressured parts of the bay.
Right after the above sentence, a power outage left me sitting in dark silence, wondering where I'd put my flashlight in case of this eventuality. As I resume, at 9:30 the following morning, I'm sipping coffee, not Pacifico.
In a way it hold true, as some species seem more likely catches down there. Bone fish for one, seem to be a more frequent catch in the warm south bay.
I agreed to meet Scott at 7 a.m. at the J St. Marina, our usual launch site. I made it about 5 minutes late. I didn't see Scott, so I tried to down as much coffee as I could before he showed up, so I wouldn't have to deal with coffee on the boat. I got my stuff out of the car, and enjoyed the nice weather. (by the way, it was in the 40s when I came home from work last night, and it had been raining all day) I saw a woman get out of her car and we started walking toward the launch ramp at the same time. I noticed she had a rod tube in her hand and asked if she was going to be fly fishing. She said, Marc? And I realized it was a woman named Kim, who I know from an interweb fishing site, and we'd even split a skiff once. Duh. I just hadn't seen her in over a year, and her hair was a different color.
We explained who we were each fishing with, and her ride showed up while we talked; also some internet fishing friends. I shook hands, and assured them I wasn't hitchhiking a ride. Then I went to score an early fish off the dock. But didn't.
Scott showed up, I did a poor job of backing the trailer down the ramp, and we were off.
Fishing with Scott is pretty fun. We've known each other since we were in high school, and have a good time together. We're two out of only three of our group of friends from the old 'hood who fish. We also both fly fish. Which is what we typically do on these trips. The thought of an exotic, like a bonefish, or a potentially large shortfin corvina, on a fly rod is too enticing to pass up.
We hit a variety of our usual spots, I traded back and forth between light bass gear, and fly gear, catching most of my fish on bass gear.
Scott stuck to his guns, and caught a good bunch of spotties, and a yellow fin croaker on flies.
We checked in with Kim, Tom, and Craig a couple of times throughout the day, to find out they'd been doing a little better than we had. Craig got a pretty big spottie.
We kept ourselves entertained talking about old friends, checking out ospreys, herons, egrets, and waterfowl.
All in all a great time on the water, and though not as productive as we'd have liked, it's a damn fun way to start a Sunday.
On Saturday morning, the 9th, I woke up, and as usual checked my computer for new emails, my usual websites, and eventually popped up my "dashboard" on my iMac to check weather & tides widgets. I was pretty shocked to see that at 9 a.m. it was already almost 70 degrees. I'd been used to seeing something near the mid-50s. I walked back through my room and threw open the curtains and it was beautiful out. I picked two bass rods out of the fishing-rod tee pee that occupies a corner of my bedroom, grabbed my yellow shore-hopping daypack, and quickly filled it with lure boxes, tools, Cliff bars, and whatever else I had handy, and got ready to head out.
The absolute closest spot where I can get a line in the water happens to be right smack downtown. It also happens to be a spot that's a pretty well-kept secret, as well as a place a lot of people just aren't willing to try out. You fish literally in the shadow of San Diego's high rises... and you have to feed a parking meter. I've actually gotten a 25-dollar parking ticket, trying to add my tenth fish to a real good two-hour meter period before work.
I'm going combine my Saturday the 9th, and Wednesday the 12th trips into one report, because they aren't worth addressing separately, and these get too long anyway. These trips both started in the morning, around 10, and the two-hour meter gave me until noon. I caught 2 spotties Saturday, and three Wednesday, and worked real hard for each one. The only difference is Saturday, I walked back to my car and saw that there were still 15 minutes on the meter, so I walked over to the calm, marina side of my spot, and cast a ghost shrimp-colored swimbait as far as I could, let it sink until it hit bottom and bounced it back to shore. Reel, reel stop, reel, reel, reel, stop, reel, reel, strike! I picked up my second spotted bass. Sweet. As I was releasing it, I saw a boil on the surface, about 15 yards straight out in front me. Something large had chased its prey to the surface. I cast in the vicinity of the boil, let it sink a couple feet and burned it back to me, hoping to induce a strike. But, no. Most of the time, that moment is gone before you ever get a chance to cast, much less twice. I threw again anyway, I only had a few more minutes on my meter, and as soon as I put my reel in gear, and started to reel, it gets hit, and my rod bends hard toward the water. I was a little taken aback how heavy the fish pulled. In fact I got a little too excited, and set the hook like a TV bass-fishing host, and my line snapped loudly. I never saw the fish. I reeled in my line, walked to my car, and drove home, a little disappointed in myself for losing such a great fish. But it's early in the season...
Sunday the 10th, I had plans to fish with my buddy Scott. He's got a fun 14-foot aluminum boat. Typically, when we take the "S.S. Rat Turd" out it's usually a fly fishing trip in the deep south of San Diego Bay. The deep south bay is a lot different than the rest of the bay in that it's very shallow, there's much less boat traffic, and there's a serenity that makes it a different experience than the sailboat regatta nearer the bridge, or the chaos up towards the mouth of the bay.
The shallow water, the distance from the mouth of the bay, and a warm-water outlet from a power plant lead to the speculation that the deep south bay holds exotic species not often found in the more pressured parts of the bay.
Right after the above sentence, a power outage left me sitting in dark silence, wondering where I'd put my flashlight in case of this eventuality. As I resume, at 9:30 the following morning, I'm sipping coffee, not Pacifico.
In a way it hold true, as some species seem more likely catches down there. Bone fish for one, seem to be a more frequent catch in the warm south bay.
I agreed to meet Scott at 7 a.m. at the J St. Marina, our usual launch site. I made it about 5 minutes late. I didn't see Scott, so I tried to down as much coffee as I could before he showed up, so I wouldn't have to deal with coffee on the boat. I got my stuff out of the car, and enjoyed the nice weather. (by the way, it was in the 40s when I came home from work last night, and it had been raining all day) I saw a woman get out of her car and we started walking toward the launch ramp at the same time. I noticed she had a rod tube in her hand and asked if she was going to be fly fishing. She said, Marc? And I realized it was a woman named Kim, who I know from an interweb fishing site, and we'd even split a skiff once. Duh. I just hadn't seen her in over a year, and her hair was a different color.
We explained who we were each fishing with, and her ride showed up while we talked; also some internet fishing friends. I shook hands, and assured them I wasn't hitchhiking a ride. Then I went to score an early fish off the dock. But didn't.
Scott showed up, I did a poor job of backing the trailer down the ramp, and we were off.
Fishing with Scott is pretty fun. We've known each other since we were in high school, and have a good time together. We're two out of only three of our group of friends from the old 'hood who fish. We also both fly fish. Which is what we typically do on these trips. The thought of an exotic, like a bonefish, or a potentially large shortfin corvina, on a fly rod is too enticing to pass up.
We hit a variety of our usual spots, I traded back and forth between light bass gear, and fly gear, catching most of my fish on bass gear.
Scott stuck to his guns, and caught a good bunch of spotties, and a yellow fin croaker on flies.
We checked in with Kim, Tom, and Craig a couple of times throughout the day, to find out they'd been doing a little better than we had. Craig got a pretty big spottie.
We kept ourselves entertained talking about old friends, checking out ospreys, herons, egrets, and waterfowl.
All in all a great time on the water, and though not as productive as we'd have liked, it's a damn fun way to start a Sunday.
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