It's been a while since I've been down to the puddles fishing, so I thought I'd give it a go.  They usually stock little stuff between the big stockings so I had no urge to get down there but there are still big Lightning Trout to catch from the last plant!

They just stocked lake 2 and you could tell from all of the people fishing that one.  Lake 3 had the next most recent plant, but there still was a few people on that one.  I decided to try the next lake and see what it had to offer.



I didn't get a single bite on the bait rods, but saw a boil within casting difference.  I didn't know if it was a trout, bass or Red Ear, so I cast my spoon out there and got bumped!  Two casts later and I was on!

Not huge, but a legit 2.25# trout!



I watched a kid catch a bass and some guys down the shoreline from me lose a trout but otherwise it was quiet and nothing going on.  I think the Pelicans and Cormies got most of these fish.

I was ready to leave when I saw another boil and re-deployed the micro spoon!  It slammed it on the first cast but gave me a shock when I netted it!  It looks like it might have been grabbed by an osprey.



I went home to grab some lunch but would be back since I paid for a permit and I was literally right around the corner.

I tried another lake to get a feel what was going on.  It was really slow until about 30 minutes before closing.

I got picked up and the strike indicator was in the water, but no one was home.  I put a new inflated crawler on and recast to get bit almost immediately!  Definitely a typical stocker that was under 2#.



But this one had a weird foggy colored head.



I think these guys are the weird ones that don't get all of the genes for whatever strain they are shotting for.

I then have another hit.  I get him all the way to the net and breaks the 2# test right at the shoreline and I consider it a Sportsmen's release.

Now the Rangers are saying last call and pack up so I slowly start reeling in my one rod that's still out there.  Well, I felt the trout hunt it down and slam it!  Last minute stocker!



This one also had an off-colored head.  Apparently, this last stocking was all of Santa's misfits!



Well, I say it was a limit with the C&R broken line, but I had 4 fish for the smoker... or actually one for the hoop net.  lol

I was planning on going back this morning, but decided to sleep in instead.  Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.

Thanks for reading!

I kicked off the first day of winter with a little "professional networking"—and what better way to connect than by hopping on the water and stacking up some fish? I met up with Quy, who owns a validation company. We've known each other for about 12 years, and he launched his business five years ago. He's always wanted to fish with me, and the timing finally lined up. Plus, I was curious if there might be a chance to work together down the road.
Quy's still pretty green when it comes to fishing—he's only been on a boat a couple of times—so I made sure he took his Dramamine. He showed up about 15 minutes late, but you could tell he was fired up. When I saw the white sneakers, I handed him my spare boots. Had to get him boat-ready.



The plan was simple: load up on bonito, then run to the "Red Grounds" to finish the job. After an hour of trolling through nothing but grass and kelp—and a blank meter—we bailed and headed straight for Red Rocks. Word on the radio was that the fleet down in Point Loma was wide-open on bonito.

I was hoping the rockfish would make up for the slow start. As we got close, another boat was drifting on my usual spot, so I slid over to a different waypoint. I set Quy up with the line-counter reel and grabbed the little spinner for myself.

First drop—bam. Solid red.



Quy's first fish wasn't huge, but he was fired up.



A little later, he got quiet and said he wasn't feeling great—maybe something he ate. I told him, "Over the rail or into the pail!" He ended up chumming, but after that he rallied and was good for the rest of the day.
The bite picked up, and it wasn't just reds. We were getting some quality "other" cod, plus a few dinks that Quy seemed to specialize in.



I handed him the little rod since he kept finding the smaller ones.



He stuck a nice barber pole—his first. Honestly, almost everything was a first for him.



I picked up a solid whitefish during the flurry.



And then my own barber pole.



Quy added a few whitefish to the count.



We hit our limits on coppers.



Then Quy hooked into something with a little more weight.



Turned out to be a nice red.



We caught more barber poles than I've seen in a long time—and some really nice ones.



Quy showing off his two-fish limit.



We kept at it until we were nearly limited out on groundfish. Then I hooked something heavy. At first, I thought it might be a shark, which made Quy a little nervous. But there were no tail slaps, and it fought all the way up from 360 feet. Turned out to be a chunky lingcod with a serious belly. Took three tries with the lip gripper to land it.



With a couple spots left, we picked up one more big barber pole before heading in.



Final tally:
•    4 Vermillions
•    2 Coppers
•    6 Barber Poles
•    4 Whitefish
•    4 Green Spotted
•    1 Ling
•    ...plus a few shorts released, for 17 groundfish total.

On the way in, we looked for bonito but only found birds. Still, the trip was a win for Quy—he got to see a gray whale, a pod of dolphins, and a couple of Mola Mola.

We cruised in at 40 mph with the wind at our backs and stopped in the bay for a few more photos.



Fat-bellied ling:



All in all, Quy went home with a pile of fresh fish. We talked a bit about work opportunities, but I hope he remembers the trip first—and maybe something will come of it down the line.

I'm lagging.  I've been working hard to find employment in my sector and all of the open positions are outside SD county or another part of the country.  I did some "networking" with an owner of a small validation company yesterday by taking him out fishing and he caught a ton!  Unfortunately, it didn't end with a job offer.

Oh well, the post is coming up soon. The deepwater "trout-rod" struck again!

10-12 inch perch are friggin nice!  It's been a while since I've been on them at that size.  One thing is for certain, the swell will be up, and the rain will be falling this week.  Probably make some new beach structure and hopefully get the bite to keep picking up.

Bravo boss!

Pail handles always outlast the bucket they came on, so hopefully it lasts the salt water too.

Do you still have to squeeze through a fence to get on that beach or is there access now? It's been 20 years since I've fished it.

Thanks for the report boss. The silver lining in the trip is more than worth it.

That's one nasty looking knee! Holy crap!

Heal up boss! You have fishing to do and a Pontoon to buy Janie!

Koga's keyboard got too sticky from the NAMBL website and all the keyboard keys frozen.

Yeah, I have to deal with bird dude on my lakes also. Friggin idiots dragging the birds over my line all the time.

You need to catch a trout! They're just dumb pool raised trained fish. 

Quote from: jrodda on December 15, 2025, 08:10:52 PMLooks good! I have the similar style and I generally like it.

Here I thought I came up with a new idea from this smaller one I was using the past couple of years... but I just did a search and see that it's only an original idea from my head but not everyone else's.

I don't get to hang out, let alone fish, with my best bud often but we finally found some time to hit the water.  It's been quite a few years since he last got out in the boat and I told him we would definitely get some big bonito, big reds, and potentially a yellow.

We launched at 7:00 and I said we'd be back by 2:00 since he had to work that night for the museum.

There was a little NW bump, but we got to the grounds that I found the bonito last week.  The only issue is the bonito were not showing themselves or the bait.  Basically, there were wolf packs of bonito swimming around and you had to troll and get blind struck. We used small gear trolling so it made for some fun fishing when we hooked up!  Todd had a blast fighting good sized bones!



We lost a few due to the dumb lure I was trolling, but we ended up with our limit.  Well, we got 10 and a few were over the 24" so we could have kept a few more but decided to just look for rockfish.



As we left and started running a big whale breached by us, but it was the weirdest looking thing!  I came up a few more times and we tried getting a picture, but it was not having it.  It had a weird triangular dorsal and was DEFINITELY NOT a Gray or Humpback...  Then we saw a big bulbous head!  Holy crap!  A Sperm Whale!  We tried chasing it around to get a picture but it sunk out and we never saw it again.  Absolutely unreal encounter!

We took the long run now at this point to get to the denizen grounds instead of chasing a whale.

I told him we would get our limit of reds quick, and he was unsure of "How Quick" it would be.  He was fishing at my money rocks afterall!  First 4 drops were reds, albeit not huge ones.  We descended the two small ones and the new descending device worked like a champ.





I moved a couple of times trying to get away from the reds and trying to find some periphery fish and we found the,  Salmon Grouper... Bank Perch... Barber Poles.....



Todd was having a blast fishing with the little gear in 350' of water.  Spotlock is the only thing that makes it possible.





We did manage a few other reds but descended them right away since we were waiting for the BIG one!  Todd thought all of them were huge, but I said we need a few 5 pound plus model to fill that last 2 spots.  I was gambling on bigger models rather than keeping two smaller ones.  Well, the big one's started to bite!





Then I hit bottom and felt a SLAMMING HIT!  I could barely budge it and it fought me every second on the fight up.  I had Todd pull the gaff since I was sure it was a big Lincod or possibly a deepwater sheephead.  At worst, we still had a live vermillion in the tank and we already released 5 by now.

We both went wide eyed and jaw dropped when it came to the surface!  A monster Red!

I was thinking 7-8 pounds for sure!  For Todd, that was the biggest Red he's ever seen anywhere!



We were getting close to needing to go, but Todd wanted a monster red himself!  He kept getting little bites and I get slammed again!  I gave him the rod and said "It's all you boss!"

It was big and heavy and fought the entire way up.  Todd kept saying it felt different, but my mind was set it was a big red or maybe a Lingcod.



But WTF?!?!  I never knew you could catch them this deep!



This is the third trip in a row I got a shark at this spot in the deep water on a jig... on the Penn 2500 spinner!
First one was a 7-gill... second was a Mako... and now a Leopard!  in 350 feet or more!

I didn't take as many pictures that I expected to, but we spent a lot of time catching up and pictures somehow became secondary.  We got back in time for him to rush home to get to work.  We took guesses on how big the Vermillion was, but were both in agreement between 7 and 8 pounds.

I was certain this was my biggest local Vermillion and put it on the scale.  My biggest were definitely from the Channel Islands, but I've never weighed them.  I definitely had some 8 pounds or over, but we just didn't have a scale.  So, this one is the biggest I've ever weighed for certain...

I got him on the scale and WOW!  I have to be honest, I was a little bummed it was only 6.99 pounds.  LOL



Well, that was it.  I had plenty of fish to clean for the Vacuum Sealer and for the Lobster cages.  More trips to be had later this week!

Thanks for reading!

Quote from: jrodda on December 13, 2025, 07:04:49 PM

This is epic!

Quote from: jrodda on December 13, 2025, 07:04:49 PMThe big white pelicans of the lake were actively feeding. They look like the biggest f@cking idiots when they hunt, holy hell. I'm absolutely astonished they don't starve. The stupid things paddle around with their head high, then upon seeing some prey swimming 4' in front of them, they awkwardly spring forward, like Koga through the curtains and out onto the stripper's stage, and then spearing into the water ahead. They had about a 20% strike rate and I would see the silhouette of a ~10-12" fish in the guler pouch of the idiot bird. I thought that was a little on the small size for stocker trout but that had to have been the prey. I also may have been basing my size of the fish on the size of a normal pelican, and these white pelicans were the size of dinosaurs, so maybe they were nicer fish.

You have to remember these trout are not very smart either, so it makes the Pelicans and Kogahead look successful.  Such dumb critters....  lol

This is the time you should be fishing that around some rocky structure. 

Thanks for the post Jeremy!  It feels good reading something like this when I log on in the mornings!

I'm absolutely over all of these overpriced descending devices that barely work, so I decided to make my own.

O had a small pail from Lowes that finally busted, so I took the handle off and straightened the wire.

I made some bends and added swivels and slightly sharpened the tip.



I brought it out yesterday and I can say without a doubt, the best descending device I've used.  Fish stayed on during the descent, and everyone came off at the desired depth.

I should market these.  lol

Ugh... I'm still looking for employment and it's friggin tough as sh!t out there (at least for my field).  I have some good prospects coming up (One interview in particular) next week so I'm trying to brush up on some guidelines.  Working in the house while my wife is working is tough to say the least, so I moved my "office" out to the fossil shed since I have internet out there.

Well. It's too easy to get sidetracked out there.  Instead of doing what I intended to do, I ended up moving and organizing my fossils while labeling them.   Ugh.  I might have to move my work office back inside, but I love the view!