Jetty Nights 8/23

I got a call Saturday morning while I was trying to shake off one beer too many from Friday night. A buddy of mine, Scott "Fishtricks" Johnson invited me for a night trip to Zuniga Jetty, at the mouth of San Diego Bay.

Zuniga is a long, semi-submerged jetty built onto the west end of North Island. It holds a lot of fish, and is home to a variety of birds, seals, and sealions. We even had a baby gray whale check us out, then swim right under the boat in about 20 feet of water once while fishing Zuniga. It's also a place we stop and throw some lures early in the morning, while we wait for the sun to come up. It's a dynamic, technical type of fishing; very fun, and usually productive.

I thought about trying some fly fishing, and even tied up some flies, but the thought of dealing with a 350-grain Streamer Express, in the dark, with no eye protection put the kibosh on that idea. I just gave the flies to Scott, and left the fly gear at home.

I met Scott at Shelter Island at 8 p.m. and we launched in the dark. The tuna hunters were all coming in, and the ramp was pretty busy. He idled out of the launch area and made our way slowly out to the jetty. It felt more like 5 a.m. than 8 p.m. as we'd made that trip quite a few times on early mornings.

The plan was to throw Scott's Trix Jetty Worms, close to the rocks to pull some calico bass, and near the the bottom for some barred sand bass. Scott wanted a taco dinner for his family. He'd laid out a selection of lures in the back of the boat for my use, and we bombarded the jetty for a few hours.

As I mentioned above, the jetty is at the end of North Island, which is the US Navy's first air base. Intermittently, some kind of fighter jets (maybe F22 Raptors?) would take off or land, passing the length of the jetty. It was shockingly, disturbingly loud, and sometimes there were two at a time. I can only compare it to seeing Dinosaur Jr. in Tijuana in the 90s, when the crowd slowly backed away from the stage and out of the room. Learned something though; it seems fighter jets have headlights.

The sport fleet was also constantly moving in or out of the bay. Something I will be doing next weekend... wait for the report. It'll be interesting.

We set up on the channel side of the jetty initially, but the wind, current and boat traffic kept pushing us into the rocks, so we went around to the calmer side for a while. Not before I negated any skunk smell by getting a decent sandie.

Picture are hard to take when you can't see anything in the view finder, and the fancy flashes that flash once, causing you to make a weird face, before the actual picture is taken don't help, so here's a series of odd pictures...

The fishing wasn't too bad, and at some points, pretty good. The fish were a mix of calico bass, barred sand bass, rock fish (brown, I think), and sculpin. Being dark it was hard to tell what you had until you bounced it into the boat. Often the fight is a dead giveaway, as sculpin just flare their gills and fins and you just drag them in.

We listened to Mexican AM stations most of the night, one was an oldies type thing, that was quite cool. It's always interesting fishing with Scott, he listens to anything, and keeps the boat entertained. He's also a wealth of fishing info, and I picked up some tips on upping my Large Mouth Bass game.

Got home at 2 a.m. and could barely get through a whole beer before I fell asleep in my chair.